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Book 






Real Preaching 



THREE ADDRESSES 



Theological Students of Oberlin 



REV. NEHEMIAH BOYNTON, D. D. 




BOSTON 

Zbe pilgrim press 



CHICAGO 



ONE COPY RECEIVED 






^ 



Copyright, 1897 
By Nehemiah Boynton 

Copyright 

Imperfftct 

Claim. 



Oberlin Theological Seminary, 

Oberlin, O., Feb. 27, 1897. 
Dear Sir :— The faculty of Oberlin Theologi- 
cal Seminary cannot refrain from expressing to 
you their appreciation of the lectures on "The 
Preacher," recently given by you in Council Hall 
to the students of the Seminary. The views they 
set forth, with rare eloquence and ample learning, 
were eminently just and stimulating. We enjoyed 
them greatly, for their inspiring effect and wise 
adaptation to confer lasting benefit on the young 
men that heard them. The ideal tHey presented 
of the Christian ministry and its work cannot 
fail to exert upon these young men a salutary 
influence. We desire that the pleasure and profit 
thus received from hearing them may be extended 
to a wider circle, that shall include, as far as 
possible, both those preparing for the ministry 
and those performing its duties. 

We therefore express to you the hope that 
you will at your earliest convenience give the 
lectures to the world in a published volume. 
Yours truly, 

A. H. Currier, 
G. F. Wright, 
Owen H. Gates, 
Committee of Faculty. 

To Kev. Nehemiah Boynton, D. D. 



PREFACE 



These addresses, prepared in the eager desire of 
inspiring the young men of Oberlin Theological 
Seminary with a sense of the royal character of the 
preacher's calling, are not intended as compendi- 
nms of the topics suggested, but are rather tran- 
scripts of impressions and convictions which have 
been gradually realized in a most delightful and 
reasonably ample ministerial experience. They 
are printed substantially as delivered, and are 
given publicity because of the request of those 
whose judgment the author respects, and with 
whose wishes he is glad to comply. The addresses 
will have fulfilled their mission if in any slightest 
way they help the younger ministry to understand 
that the life of the sacred calling is one, 

"Whose least distinguished day 
Shines with some portion of that heavenly lustre 
Which makes the Sabbath lovely in the sight 
Of blessed angels, pitying human cares." 

Nehemiah Boynton. 
First Congregational Church, 
Detroit, Mich., Nov. 1, 1897. 



CONTENTS 



Chaptek. Page. 

I. The Real Man . ... . 5 

II. The Real Sermon 49 

III. The Real Audience .... 89 



I 
THE REAL MAN 



THE REAL MAN 

The lecture of Thomas Carlyle upon "The 
Hero as Priest" is a ministerial pharmaco- 
poeia. With what profit it can be consulted 
is best known to those who have dared fol- 
low faithfully its drastic but effective pre- 
scriptions. By it many a case of "heart 
failure " has been subdued ; many a slug- 
gish circulation has been quickened to its 
normal rate ; many a victim of melancholia 
has recovered spirit, purpose, hope ! Every 
student for the ministry should pass before 
that chief of all examiners, his own con- 
science, a strict, searching, and uncompro- 
mising examination upon every page of this 
trenchant, single-purposed utterance ! Speak- 
ing of Martin Luther, the man who "had 
to ivork an epic poem, not write one," Car- 
lyle remarks : " It was his task to get ac- 
quainted with realities, and keep acquainted 



8 REAL PREACHING 

with them, at whatever cost; his task was 
to bring the whole world back to reality, 
for it had dwelt too long with sem- 
blance." 

Luther had no monopoly of this business 
of world recovery. Every other hero priest 
in the past struck hands with him ; every 
genuine, sincere minister of to-day makes 
like confession of his faith, and cherishes 
like interpretation of the meaning of his 
life endeavor. 

A minister is no Don Quixote, resplen- 
dent in shining armor, hurrying his spur- 
driven steed to death in his fantastic tilt- 
ing against windmills ; he is no skeleton in 
armor; he is a real knight, the red cross 
emblazoned on his breast, riding upon the 
King's business, which requires haste ; en- 
tering the lists "against principalities, against 
powers, against the rulers of the darkness 
of this world, against spiritual wickedness 
in high places." For himself a minister 
must recover the sense of the unveiled 
actuality of life, before he can hope to 
convey that sense to the dreamy, somno- 
lent world about him : he must be real 
himself! So far as he is concerned, the 



THE BEAL MAN 9 

mote will always blind his brother's vision 
so long as the beam blurs his own. The 
essential of the ministry is neither theologi- 
cal, nor homiletical, nor oratorical ; it is 
personal. It is the man, inspired by the 
reality of a great love, ennobled by the 
absoluteness of a supreme ideal, and bent 
beneath the royal burden of a strenuous, 
exacting, but world-enriching and actual 
service. 

" When God calls very loud at the time 
you are born," remarked one of the princely 
preachers of our century, "standing at the 
door of life, and says, ' Quarter of a man, 
come forth ! * that man is not for the min- 
istry. ' Half a man, come forth ! ' no : that 
will not do for a preacher. ' Whole man, 
come ! ' that is you ! The man must be a 
man, and a full man, that is going to be 
a true Christian minister, and especially in 
those things which are furthest removed 
from selfishness and the nearest in alliance 
with true divine love." 

A man's ministry must be the natural, 
sequential corollary of the real proposition 
of his life : any other will be spurious, 
fatuous, imbecile. Not until the house built 



10 REAL PREACHING 

on the sand can rival the security of that 
founded on the rock, in the face of de- 
scending rain, coming floods, and blowing 
wind; not until sounding brass and tin- 
kling cymbal, masquerading as love, can be- 
come such, will a hollow-souled, artificial, 
unreal man become a true minister, or a 
" priest after the order of Melchizedek," 
" burning with mild, equable radiance, as 
the enlightener of daily life " ! 

It is of the first importance, therefore, 
that he who looks toward the most sub- 
lime, exalted, and soul-satisfying of all life- 
work, the ministry, should explore himself; 
work the deep mines of passion and pur- 
pose in his soul; assay the ore, that he may 
be assured at the start if the mine is worth 
developing, if the investment of his life — 
the only one he will ever have a chance 
to place — will yield a return with which he 
will be content, after a score, after two 
score years. 

A superficial motive, sw T aying the sceptre 
of your life, means a supercilious, emascu- 
lated ministry, the end of which is some- 
times a degenerate book agent, sometimes 
an itinerant insurance solicitor, sometimes a 



THE REAL MAN 11 

"devourer of widows' houses" through ill- 
advised land speculation, but, always, a 
Sahara, with crows and carrion, and never 
one oasis to relieve the dreary waste of 
unmitigated failure. 

Many come to the ministry, drifting upon 
the swelling tide of a besetting influence, 
fanned by the gentle, grateful breezes of 
fond and admiring friends. Young men are 
told of their remarkable qualifications for 
the ministry by those whose ignorance is 
only surpassed by the brazen assurance of 
their unsanctified confidence. As a result, 
there is no deep-souled grip of purpose, no 
resolute heroism, no utter sincerity or genu- 
ine self-committal. " Yet hath he not root in 
himself, but dureth for a while : for when 
tribulation or persecution ariseth because of 
the word, by and by he is offended." Cer- 
tain as the rigorous and unaccommodating 
coming of Sunday, with its peremptory de- 
mand for two sermons, is it that such a 
soul will loathe "this light bread," and 
sigh for " the cucumbers, and the melons, 
and the leeks, and the onions, and the gar- 
lick" which it "did eat in Egypt freely"! 

Contemporary history illustrates — substi- 



12 REAL PREACHING 

tuting a pseudonym. The following ap- 
peared recently in a metropolitan journal: 

"WILL BECOME A BOOK AGENT. 

"Rev. Lookalokg The Backward way 

Temporarily gives up his Rectorship ! 

" Rev. Mr. Backwardway says he is tired 
of preaching, and needs a rest; therefore he 
is going to become a book agent. He has 
secured a position with a certain magazine 
exchange and will hereafter hustle for it. 
His full explanation of the change is that 
his creative faculties are on the wane or 
have become worn out temporarily. He has 
fallen into a rut, and he had to choose 
between becoming a drug on the preaching 
market or embarking into something else 
and giving his brain a chance to recuper- 
ate. He hopes by the end of six months 
that he will be able to resume his place 
in the ministry. He came to this city fresh 
from a theological seminary, and without 
other experience plunged enthusiastically into 
reform work. He will preach his farewell 
sermon next Sunday." 

Farewell, Rev. Mr. Lookalong The Back- 



THE BEAL MAN 13 

ward way ! Doubtless the pulpit will never 
ring again with your nasal, hollow verbi- 
age, and doubtless, too, this will be your 
noblest contribution to the coming of the 
kingdom of God ! 

It is safe to affirm that the colored 
brother never celebrated the fiftieth anni- 
versary of his ordination who gave as his 
reason for entering the ministry, — 

"Dis ere sun am so hot, 

Dis ere cotton row am so long, 

Dis ere hoe am so heavy, 

Dat dis ere nigger suspects he is called to 
de ministry." 

The Rev. Mr. Cream Cheese, adored rec- 
tor of Mrs. Potiphar, queen of "our best 
society," will not have strength sufficient 
through a series of }^ears for the arduous 
toils of a great parish, especially by reason 
of the sacred confidences he must cherish, 
the discriminating advice he must dispense, 
when beneath the inspiring and exhausting 
joy of his pastoral ministry he spends a 
whole afternoon with Mrs. Potiphar, sipping 
wine, tasting cold chicken, and announcing 
a judgment, weighty and memorable, upon 



14 REAL PREACHING 

the vexed question of the appropriate color 
of the velvet upon the cover of her prayer- 
book: "Bind your prayer-book in pale blue, 
the color of skim-milk, dear Mrs. Potiphar, 
which is so full of pastoral associations." 

Dear soul ! he will not die in the har- 
ness unless one of those swift, and some- 
times satisfactory providences, shall cut him 
off and relieve the world ere half his life 
is spent ! 

Sir Walter Besant has written a short 
but powerful story, in which, with keen 
insight, is depicted the awful consequence 
of the union of an ambitious purpose and 
a hollow heart. " Before the altar rails in 
the chancel of an old Norman cathedral, 
stand a company of young men, seeking 
admission into the holy office of priesthood. 
Among them is one distinguished from 
all the rest by the priestly qualities which 
are apparently his, the noble form, open 
countenance, rich, musical voice, and a 
'fervor of devotion amounting almost to 
rapture.' " This is your introduction to 
Rev. Paul Leighan ; your leave-taking is 
through a warden's letter written after 
Leighan's death in a prison, between which 



THE REAL MAN 15 

and the cathedral rolls the expanse of the 
mighty ocean. 

Paul Leighan had a " love for things 
ecclesiastical, but he had no religion at all," 
and, consequently, to the highest bidder he 
would sell everything he had, himself in- 
cluded. It is not necessary to trace his 
treading of the tortuous downward path. 
He became a liar and a thief ; he plagiarized; 
to ease the strain upon his pocket-book, he 
traveled, now as leading tenor of a min- 
strel company, now as star in a theatrical 
venture, his specialty being that of the 
" comic curate " ; he reformed, became a re- 
markable exhorter and soldier in the Salva- 
tion Army under the name of " The Frisky 
Deacon " ; he abased a loyal woman's love, 
fled across the sea for safety, took a parish, 
in which for a time he was regarded as a 
man of exceptional eloquence and deep 
piety; he joined a company of swindlers; 
was imprisoned, and in prison died. His 
characteristic was the "form of godliness"; 
his hideous lack was " the power thereof." 
He is an exaggerated, but nevertheless a 
real, illustration of the inevitable fruition of 
a spurious or of a secondary motive. There 



16 REAL PREACHING 

is but one consummation, but one finale, and 
that is utter, absolute, irremediable disaster. 
Language cannot be too explicit, words too 
plain, influence too powerful, in exploiting 
with all sympathy, but with equal fidelity, 
the life peril of espousing the ministry 
through ill-considered, inadequate, or insuffi- 
cient motives. 

This motive is the keystone of your life 
arch. Quarry for it, and when you have 
once exhumed it, put it in its elevated 
position in your soul, where you may re- 
affirm it every day, and where you can be 
reinvigorated by its genial, strengthful com- 
panionship. It must be great enough to 
make you content with the limitations you 
will encounter. A white tie about the neck, 
a clerical vest over the chest, and a scowl 
on the brow will breed more practical un- 
belief than a score of heretical sermons. 
The minister whose calling has lost its hope- 
fulness, its content, its smile, and has re- 
tained only its ecclesiasticism and a few old 
sermons, is always " a quarter of a man " 
who has lest his other " three quarters," 
which is the towering grandeur of a motive 
which can sway him. 



THE REAL MAN 17 

The motive must be great enough to 
choke to death any incipient jealousy of 
your college classmate who has received his 
life portion in abounding wealth, while you 
are daily growing poor. If you are not wil- 
ling to be poor for the sake of the opportu- 
nity of ministering to others, in heaven's 
name quit now, for your motive is not 
strong enough. You will evolve into an 
elongated grumbler, not a Christian minister. 
Your motive must be supreme enough to 
grant you decision in peremptorily refusing 
to be high priest of expediency, and to offi- 
ciate at the elaborate but eviscerated cere- 
monials at which principle is slain, amid 
hosannas and hallelujahs, upon the brazen 
altar of policy. 

The mariner can sail without a compass ; 
the mechanic can work without a forge ; the 
merchant can trade without capital ; but the 
minister cannot live without a motive : it is 
absolutely for him a sine qua non. With it 
he is a giant; without it he is not even a 
germ. Every minister knows how Savo- 
narola felt when he wrote to his needy 
mother " to forgive him if he has nothing 
but prayers to offer to his family, since his 



18 REAL PREACHING 

religious profession precludes him from help- 
ing them in other ways." But also does 
every minister claim kinship with him as he 
further writes, " Know, then, that this heart 
of mine is more than ever bent on devoting 
my soul and body and all the knowledge 
granted to me by God, to his service and 
my neighbor's salvation." Problem : Sub- 
tract from Savonarola his motive, and what 
is the probability of his ever being Prior of 
St. Mark's, or yielding his life in his en- 
deavor to make Jesus Christ King of Flor- 
ence ? 

There is in existence a short but precious 
paper, dated March 3, 1822. These words, 
among others, are written there: 

" What can I do? Lord, here I am, a sin- 
ner. Take me. Take all that I have and 
shall have ; all that I am and shall be ; and 
do with me as seemeth good. If Thou hast 
anything for me to do ; if Thou hast any- 
thing for me to suffer in the cause of that 
Saviour on whom I rest my all, I am ready 
to labor, to suffer, or to die. I am ready to 
do anything for Thee." Oh, think you that 
Horace Bushnell had no need of that radi- 
ant self-committal in his after-life, that life 



THE REAL MAN 19 

so tangled, so twisted, so tempest-tossed, but 
so calm, so noble, so expanding? I tell you 
that enthroned motive, that swelling purpose, 
saved Bushnell to his God, his world, his 
ministry, himself. 

A young man, brilliant as a diamond, keen 
as a stiletto's edge, is turning away from 
the law as a profession, and is attracted to 
the ministry. He is wide-eyed, he is expert 
in consequences, he is not drifting, he is sail- 
ing by the stars. Here is his memorandum: 

" June 12, 1841. My birth night. I have 
been for the last hour on the sea-shore, not 
dreaming, but thinking deeply and strongly, 
and forming determinations which are to 
affect my destiny through time and through 
eternity. Before the sleeping earth and the 
sleepless sea and stars, I have devoted my- 
self to God : a vow never (if he gives me 
the faith I pray for) to be recalled." 

Can you think of Charles Kingsley, who 
used to sign himself in letters to personal 
friends, Boanerges Roar-at-the-clods ; who said 
as his final word to his Eversley charge, " to 
live with Christ in the next world you must 
live like Christ in this"; whose life was 
such a complete compendium of his words — 



20 REAL PEE ACHING 

can you think of him as really achieving, 
apart from the sacred coronation of that 
holy hour before the sleeping earth and the 
sleepless sea and stars ? 

If Savonarola, Bushnell, Kingsley and 
every other minister who has wrought 
mightily has done it in the strength of an 
enthroned motive, surely you and I can ill 
afford to ignore what was to them the essen- 
tial. You cannot be either one of these. 
You can be something better — you can be 
yourself, commissioned by your God, charged 
with your message, electrified with your mo- 
tive. Oh, get a motive for entering the 
ministry ! Get a commission from God, a 
call which shall evidence itself through the 
sentinel of a victorious motive forever tri- 
umphantly making his rounds in your life. 
Espouse the undergirding life purpose ; not 
in the dream which "came to a pale poet's 
sleep," but in the decision of a holy and 
luminous waking hour, gratefully confess: 

"I am singled out by God, 
No sin must touch me." 

This emerging, essential motive, indeed a 
new birth from above, a new power from 



THE REAL MAN 21 

on high, will never permit itself to become 
quiescent, docile, occasional : at once it is 
evidential, imperative, constant. Its mission 
is to deliver the life to its glorious pur- 
pose and from whatever obstacles and hin- 
drances cut right and left with flaming 
sword and dispute the soul's passage through 
their territory to its own. The characteris- 
tic of this motive for which I plead is 
wholeness : it is complete. Therefore it- 
demands the area of a whole life for its 
exercise ; nothing less will grant it a suffi- 
cient orbit. 

The mere ecclesiastic has devoted a por- 
tion of himself. He has set his affection on 
organization, ritual, ceremony. He wakens 
in you the resentful temper which in Kings- 
ley found explosive vent: "I begin to hate 
these dapper young ladies' preachers like 
the devil." 

The mere theologian has contributed his 
hair-splitting and logic-chopping faculties. 
As a student he may be preeminent, but 
as a minister among men he is more cer- 
tain to be a Mr. Dry-as-dust than a Mr. 
Great-heart. 

The mere preacher — oh, God deliver the 



22 REAL PREACHING 

ministry from the mere preachers ! — toys 
with the ministry on Sunday, and during 
the week regrets his inability personally to 
visit the people. 

The mere pastoi dispenses through the 
week calling cards, keeps a most elaborate 
record of visitation, sometimes even noting 
topics of conversation for future use, and 
on Sunday " occupies the pulpit." 

Each has attempted the impossible ! You 
cannot get the whole ministerial motive 
into part of your life. So towering, so 
sublime, so godlike is this motive that it 
will never accept a percentage as an equiv- 
alent for the whole. Jonathan Edwards 
discovered this and early wrote: " Resolved, 
that I will live with all my might while 
I do live." Robertson, too, was no stranger 
to it, and resolved, that "I will believe in 
myself." Since this motive calls for all your 
life, no part of that life can be indifferent. 

St. Francis used to call his body his 
brother Asinus, and declared that it needed 
rough treatment. The old idea of spiritual 
health was always bodily mortification. The 
true idea is bodily perfectness in order to 
spiritual robustness. 



THE BEAL MAN 23 

The care of health as a ministerial duty 
may be urged on many grounds, but ulti- 
mately on this : You are giving your lives 
to the expression of a deep-souled motive, 
therefore let there be in bodily vigor no 
impediment to its largest manifestation. A 
minister needs a physique, because no other 
calling makes so varied and exhausting a 
drain upon vitality. 

It is sometimes asked why a minister 
with but two sermons a week should be 
more weary than a lawyer who prepares a 
brief and makes a plea every day. The 
answer of experience is. that a minister's 
strength is tapped at more points than a 
lawyer's. To throw one's self into a mood 
is an exhausting process, but to throw one's 
self into a dozen is very much more so. 
What a draft upon the physical resources 
of a man a day's record of the scenes of 
a clerical life will exhibit ! In the morn- 
ing there is the study — more close, faith- 
ful, intense, as the man is beneath the 
influence of his motive. This is the men- 
tal draft. In the afternoon, his sympathy 
is stirred by the suffering of the sick-room; 
his indignation boils at the confidential nar- 



24 REAL PREACHING 

ration of some dark outrage of iniquity on 
innocence, of strength upon weakness; his 
courage must buttress some tottering spirit; 
his calm faith must fit out a soul evi- 
dently setting sail on a boisterous sea. 
On the way from the home within the val- 
ley of the shadow of death, to the home 
which has just experienced some bounding 
family joy, he must readjust himself, that he 
may not tarnish, by sombre look, the bright, 
glad lustre of the shining hour. In the even- 
ing, it is an address, a business conference, 
a social function, so that at the end of the 
day he finds that the varied moods into 
which he has been obliged to throw himself 
to accomplish his ministry have taxed him 
at every point. His legs are weary, brain 
tired, nerves twitch, sympathies are lacerated, 
risibles exhausted! The whole man has been 
exercised by the whole motive. And this 
is his business ! How can it be transacted 
by a physical incompetent! You do not 
help your case by pleading that some noble 
ministers have been physical underlings. 
Exceptions never establish. If you fail of 
conscience in the care of your body — the 
temple of the Holy Ghost — you may pos- 



THE REAL MAN 25 

sibly secure the second or third, but never 
the first, achievement of your ministry. 

So, also, does the whole motive enlist 
the habits of your life. Soiled linen, 
unbrushed clothing, muddy boots, teeth 
which have been left to their own destruc- 
tion, finger nails dressed in deep black, 
mourning the loss of all things, a general 
unkempt, slack appearance, is sufficient evi- 
dence, in some cases, to demonstrate that 
the possessor has mistaken his calling. 

The use of tobacco, which is probably 
on the increase in the ministry as in other 
life, and which is gradually being esteemed 
as an indifferent habit, I do not regard as 
such. No habit is indifferent. Everything 
counts. The distinguished divines who 
evolve their great thoughts amid the curl- 
ing smoke and grateful incense of the 
fragrant Havana are quite unanimous in 
their paternal counsels to the young to 
avoid their peccadillos. Very many of 
them cannot shut their consciences up in 
their cigar boxes or tobacco pouches, write 
over them the inscription, " Mequiescat in 
pace" and dwell in content. The uneasy 
corpse will once in a while turn in its 



26 REAL PEE ACHING 

coffin, and the turning very frequently 
introduces an embarrassing and delicate 
situation. 

Young men, a meerschaum cannot make 
— it can unmake — a minister! A sermon 
is not better for being conceived in smoke, 
nor can a pastor's visit in a sick-room be 
more welcome because he leaves a nauseat- 
ing odor behind him ! The ministerial motive 
which challenges your whole life will not 
fail to throw its gauntlet before all your 
habits of personal indulgence, and, as you 
value your largest life accomplishment, you 
will not, in the lofty disdain of your 
selfish complacency, dismiss this particular 
challenge as unworthy of your steel. 

The habit of courtesy is among the most 
important of those conspicuously swayed 
by the ministerial motive. Politeness is 
"polished civility"; courtesy is " respectful 
address and manner." The home of polite- 
ness in society is on the surface; of cour- 
tesy, in the depths of the soul. The valet 
of politeness is suavity ; of courtesy, sincer- 
ity. The polite man may be like Words- 
worth's moralist, 



TEE REAL MAN 27 

"One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling 
Nor form nor feeling great or small." 

The courteous soul is Shakespeare's "no- 
blest Roman of them all," 

"the elements 
So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up 
And say to all the world, ' This was a man!'" 

Courtesy is character in high relief ; it is 
the shining of the soul, the transfiguration 
of the spirit. The polite man may be 
courteous, the courteous man must be polite. 

A minister must expect to be interviewed, 
interrupted, and, to a degree, imposed upon 
by all sorts and conditions of men! The 
hobby rider wants to make a pleasure park 
of an hour or two of a minister's precious 
time in which he may exercise his usually 
spavined Bucephalus, which like Alexander's 
famous steed, " only himself can or cares 
to ride " ! 

The sonorous-voiced reformer, whose 
apology for intellectual astigmatism is an 
impudent, conceited cock-sureness of vision 
of the land o' the leal, and the highway 
leading to it, and who, by the way, has 
never meditated upon Carroll D. Wright's 



28 REAL PEE ACHING 

stinging bon mot, " When any one pro- 
poses a solution, I move to adjourn," — this 
bumptious individual makes frequent incur- 
sions into the territory of a minister's 
choicest seclusions, and wages the sham 
fight of his guerrilla warfare with ministers 
— " stall fed, hypocritical, cowardly minis- 
ters " — as his imaginary foes. You will be 
expected to witness the engagement, praise 
the valor of this skeleton in armor, confess 
the righteous doom of your brethren in 
Christ, marvel that you yourself have been 
thus far spared, and pledge your troth that 
henceforth you will renounce all allegiance 
save to this bold cavalier, who poses not 
alone as a mighty warrior, but as 

"A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, 
An intellectual All-in-all! " 

This Moses-deliverer, this " second Daniel 
come to judgment" is to me the most 
exasperating, gall-stirring, spleen-exciting son 
of Adam who ever crosses the threshold of 
my ministerial life. But he crosses it ! 

The man with his petty spite wants to 
unload. The woman with her impossible 
and visionary scheme for the amelioration 



THE BEAL MAN 29 

of the condition of her sex, which usually 
includes a position for herself as matron, 
wants your endorsement and contribution. 
The irritable man wants to display his 
usually harmless and uninteresting pyrotech- 
nics. The keen, pitiless sister, who detected 
a mispronunciation, or an unseemly use of 
grammar in your last Sunday's sermon, but 
who is innocent as a new-born babe of 
the intent of your discourse, desires an 
interview that she may solace herself, and 
for once observe you arrayed in dust and 
ashes! The " little ones" come whose burdens 
are so great to them, and who find such 
comfort and relief in displaying their small 
wares in the minister's presence that they 
forget that possibly this may be his busy 
day. The. natural logician, who, having 
never studied theology himself, for that 
reason thinks himself competent to be 
censor of yours ; that most to be pitied 
spirit, not quite brainless enough for an 
asylum, nor quite equipped for the life 
struggle, a harmless, ignorant, but frequently 
present bore — all these, as well as the 
strong, sweet, inspiring visitations, are part 
of a minister's daily experience. To be a 



30 REAL PREACHING 

minister to them all, self-contained, digni- 
fied, approachable, sympathetic, courteous, 
yet manly, courageous, independent — in this 
ability resides no small part of a minister's 
acceptability among men. 

Small considerations are not only the 
tomb but the tabernacle of great things. 
Many and many a man, laying aside for 
trivial cause and in humble presence the 
royal robes of his native courtesy, and 
pompously arraying himself in the gaudy 
fabrics of scorn, impatience, anger, has 
snapped the spinal cord of his influence. 
Many and many a man, by his courtesy in 
a boisterous, passionate hour, permitting 
billows of boiling wrath to dash against 
his impervious manhood, harmless as the 
spray-flinging waves against the granite of 
the shore, has in that hour . established 
himself. A minister is a man ! 

This principle of courtesy reaches to the 
pulpit. It takes a young minister some 
time to sharply distinguish between the 
vigorous enunciation of principle and the 
unmanly, unwise, unchristian use of person- 
alities. It is greatly to be regretted that 
the fathers in Israel are in many instances, 



THE BEAL MAN 31 

in this regard, so poor examples for the 
young Timothys to follow. 

Nowhere is it so " excellent to have a 
giant's strength," and nowhere is it so 
"tyrannous to use it like a giant," as in the 
pulpit. Men do not bring in the kingdom 
of God by an unworthy use of a great 
advantage. The minister who, safely barri- 
caded behind the proprieties of the house of 
God, which deny the privilege of formal 
reply from the pew to formal statement by 
the pulpit, uses his sacred trust to vent 
small spite, air petty grievances, assail per- 
sonal character, is beneath the contempt of 
decent men. The evacuation of his soul by 
the spirit of courtesy will leave him a prey 
to his own insincerity. It requires a deal 
of moral courage at times to withstand the 
popular demand for the pommeling by the 
pulpit of some special sinner above others ; 
but a noble restraint, a heroic courtesy, an 
incisive handling of the involved principle, 
served without the hard sauce of personality, 
saves the pulpit, the preacher and the 
principle. It is by incarnation of principle, 
not by inveighing of personalities, that men 



32 REAL PREACHING 

climb on " stepping-stones of their dead 
selves to higher things ! " 

Beyond the corraling of habit to the ser- 
vice of the masterful motive, the real man 
forever strives to inform himself. 

Ministers are of two classes. There are 
those whose profession springs from their 
lives; there are those whose lives spring 
from their profession. The one class is 
continually, in the spirit of a large vision, 
getting ready for life; the other, in the 
small horizon of a microscopic glance, is 
always preparing for next Sunday. The one 
believes in the development of self holding — 

" Self is the man: who thrones and crowns 
would claim 
Must personally be worthy of the same." 

The other esteems the development of the 
theme for Sunday the consequential busi- 
ness of the week. The latter reads in a 
narrow, partisan and scrappy fashion. His 
sermons have an unction which suggests a 
lurking doubt in the recesses of his own 
soul ; and the doubt is usually there ! In 
his pulpit utterances there is a combination 
of the hortatory and the hysterical, a sug- 



THE BEAL MAN 83 

gestion of the emptiness of flying foam, 
rather than of the endurance of firm foun- 
dations. 

Ecclesiastical dime museums on the Lord's 
day, where sensational preachers dishonor 
God in their zealous but mistaken regard 
for man, are usually operated by those 
before whose life stalks forever the tall, 
ungainly interrogation point, with its soli- 
tary, parrot-like accomplishment in language, 
"What shall I do for next Sunday?" An 
article in the magazine received late Sat- 
urday, a social scandal, a proposed munici- 
pal reform, or a rustle among the branches 
of the wide-spreading tree of temperance, 
is to him like a sail to a castaway on his 
raft in mid-ocean, or a sentence in his 
native tongue to a man in the land of the 
stranger. " Getting ready for next Sun- 
day," as the business of a man's life, is 
like building a road from Boston to San 
Francisco merely to carry a morning and 
an evening passenger. Before long this 
minister's life will become a parasite within 
the shell of his profession ! 

On the other hand, the minister whose 
profession springs from his life will forever 



34 REAL PREACHING 

be striving for self -equipment ; for more 
stately mansions for his soul "as the swift 
seasons roll." A continual recessional greets 
his departure from his "low-vaulted past." 
His mind is a reservoir into which he con- 
tinually pumps the living water from many 
a mountain spring, and from which he 
slakes the thirst of the people ! His read- 
ing is wide; his food is brought from afar; 
he studies the opposite side; he puts him- 
self in the other's place; he seeks not for 
triumph, but for truth; his concern is with 
great subjects, and his experience is that 
from these the Sunday sermon 

" droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath.'' 

A life made more ample by a varied, broad, 
and sumptuous literary diet, means an en- 
riched profession — a Sunday sermon which 
shall be not merely a smile, a tear, or a lisped 
and vapid " God bless you," but a brain, a 
backbone, a heart. 

It was emancipation day in the life of 
Wilberforce when by his own . confession 
"in his later years he gave up preparing 
sermons and simply prepared himself ! " 



THE REAL MAN 35 

The minister who " prepares himself," makes 
the most virile, the most conscientious, and 
the most effective preparation for Sunday. 

Among the many possible departments of 
literary self-culture — poetry, science, fiction, 
history, biography, — I select at this time, 
for emphasis, a single one, namely, the 
great lives of your otvn profession! It will 
exalt your conception of the calling to 
which you have consecrated your life, to 
know Moses not simply as a patriarch, 
Isaiah as a prophet, Paul as an apostle; 
but each as a minister laying his life to 
the same splendid purpose as your own ; to 
appreciate as your fellow-craftsman Ignatius, 
on every fragment of whose martyred heart 
was found written in letters of gold, so 
the legend runs, the name of Jesus, and 
whose thrilling word, which made Polycarp, 
and has made many a man since, was : " Be 
steadfast as a smitten anvil, for it is the 
part of a great athlete to receive blows 
and conquer." To know him as a brother 
is to add new wealth to your capital. 
That St. Francis and St. Bernard are of 
your fraternity, Savonarola of your ilk, yokes 
your life with the noblest born of earth. 



36 REAL PREACHING 

Nor does the lustre fade in modern times. 
Newman, Maurice, Kingsley, Robertson, Stan- 
ley, Spurgeon, in England; Edwards, Brain- 
erd, Beecher, Bushnell, Goodell, and latest — 
and I had almost said most beautiful — 
A. J. Gordon, in America; the study of 
these fascinating, diversified, hope-exalted, 
doubt-driven, heresy-scorned, toil-smitten, 
faithful, royally noble lives, will widen out 
a man's conceptions, lift his ideal, stir his 
soul purposes, till in heartfelt, prideful 
gratitude he will exclaim, " Thank God, I, 
too, am a minister ! " 

They were so splendidly human, these 
giants of the faith, while so utterly earnest! 
Their lives were so diverse, their tastes so 
singular, their experiences so individual! 
They found their recreations in different 
employments; they did "battle royal'' on 
widely separate fields of war; they lived 
their great-hearted years under clear and 
cloudy sky; they studied, served, suffered, 
with uncompromising fidelity. So royal, so 
brave, so towering are they all that you 
want to write beneath the life of each, 
Longfellow's description of the theologian 
"of Cambridge on the Charles," who — 



THE REAL MAN 37 

1 'preached to all men everywhere 
The Gospel of the Golden Eule, 
The new commandment given to men, 
Thinking the deed and not the* creed 
Would help us in our utmost need. 
"With reverent feet the earth he trod, 
Nor banished nature from his plan, 
But studied still with deep research 
To build the Universal Church, 
Lofty as is the love of God 
And ample as the wants of man." 

Beyond books, there are men ; and the 
study of persons is quite as essential to an 
informed soul as that of parchments. 

Practical observation is a university of 
itself. Dickens could not more profitably 
employ midnight hours than by walking 
London streets, finding and watching char- 
acters ; Burns could write no more touch- 
ing poem than that of the "Wee Mousie," 
whose home, on the bleak winter's day, he 
saw so rudely destroyed by the cruel plow- 
share, and whose unceremonious ejectment 
taught the lesson that 

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men 
Gang aft a-gley. " 



38 REAL PREACHING 

The Rev. Mr. Morgan, of Greenwich, 
Conn., if he knew little of books, still had 
a sense of his parishioners' vexations and 
difficulties, which, on the practical side, 
made him a minister not to be despised. 

"Wall, our minister," said the venerable 
deacon, "gives so much attention to his 
farm and orchard that we get pretty poor 
sermons, but he is mighty movin' in prayer 
in caterpillar and canker-worm time ! " 

There was a deal of philosophy in the 
practice of that outrageous pedagogue, Mr. 
Squeers, who, having taught the boy to 
spell and parse "horse," sent him to groom 
the aforesaid animal, with the promise of a 
sound thrashing if the grooming did not 
reveal an intimate acquaintance with the 
beast's pelt ! 

Robertson was a student, but he became 
the apostle of the Avorkingmen by entering 
into their lives. Kingsley loved to burn 
the midnight oil, but on the cholera com- 
mittee he probably gained information which 
was invaluable. Bushnell was an inspira- 
tional theologian, but his efforts for a pub- 
lic park were high-priced yet competent 
tutors to his great spirit. 



THE BEAL MAN 39 

A priest and a Protestant minister have 
been sitting on the jury in New Haven. 
The duty has put dynamite beneath their 
habits of work. The rude noises of the 
world have supplanted the quiet of their 
morning's study, but besides their ministry 
to the public, they have beyond doubt 
embossed their shields and sharpened their 
swords. Bringing their ideals to court has 
blessed justice and the ideals, too ! Their 
sermons have not suffered from being con- 
ceived in the halls of the blind-eyed god- 
dess, nor been injured by being tinctured 
with the essence of actual life. 

It is a constant declaration concerning 
ministers that, in Josh Billings's phrase, 
"they know a great many things that ain't 
so." Measurably true is the charge, it must 
be confessed, but usually that minister is 
acquitted whose motive is strong enough 
to drive him daily to his study, and daily, 
also, to his parish. A healthy ideal forever 
seeks a human incarnation. The really 
spiritual will seek for clothing the royally 
practical. A well-informed minister knows 
books, and he knows men, who are the raw 



40 REAL PREACHING 

material out of which books, which " are 
the life-blood of master spirits," are made. 

The real man, the executive of the swell- 
ing monarchical motive, which dominates his 
habits and informs his life, aspires to lead- 
ership. A minister, if he is anything, is a 
leader. 

Tennyson, singing his immortal requiem 
to the sacred memory of Arthur Hallam, 
chants, — 

"How pure at heart and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold, 
Should be the man whose thought would hold 
An hour's communion with the dead." 

What, then, of the man who has resolved 
upon a life's communion with the living ; 
who is to interpret men to themselves, to 
inspire their nobility, to lead out the lag- 
ging resolutions of their overlaid con- 
sciences ? 

An effective leader is composite. He 
must possess not only resolution but re- 
straint. His must be not only a patient 
faith, but a noble fear. His reserves must 
be as disciplined as his advancing hosts. 
He must thoroughly master that difficult 



THE REAL MAN 41 

but essential lesson, that to wait is con- 
quest ofttimes, where impetuous advance is 
but the prelude to ignominious defeat. 
They laughed at a Massachusetts governor 
in the colonial days, because he was so 
thoroughly controlled by his wife. "A 
man," said the sage publicist, "must learn 
to be governed himself before he can gov- 
ern others." 

To come to the kingdom at such a time 
as this, an aspirant for the leadership of 
love, is to combine a rare privilege with a 
stupendous responsibility. If ever the min- 
istry were under bonds to "play the man," 
it is so to-day. On the one hand crum- 
bling, on the other, construction; here a 
fond grasp of an outworn tradition, there 
a bold capture of a citadel of error; the 
capitalist seeking support, the workingman 
justice; small race wars in communities in 
which the dirty immigrant infringes upon 
the comfort of the dainty life resident, and 
the wages of the man who arrived the day 
before him ; the tendency to the separa- 
tion of classes; the need of democracy in 
churches, — a need not always sure to be 
clearly discovered by politic deacons or for- 



42 REAL PREACHING 

revenue-only trustees ; all these call pite- 
ously to-day for men of God, who will not 
only emit diatribes, but who will develop 
measures ; who will construct as well as 
condemn. A leadership which rouses only 
the pugnacious spirit of the church, a spirit 
which is the very opposite of that wrath 
which is slow to rise and ready to abate, 
makes at best only a meagre contribution 
to the urgent situation. A leadership which 
quits the church, as if it were a sinking 
ship, and advocates independent action, is 
likewise, usually, of questionable value. 

Mrs. Phelps-Ward, in "A Singular Life," 
has drawn with rare insight and with truly 
sanctified sagacity the character of a real 
leader. You follow him in his manly 
efforts, his brave struggles and modest 
achievements with increasing sympathy and 
admiration. You cannot forget, however, 
that he is all the while doing what, 
though for him, perhaps, a necessary thing, 
would bring untold calamity to great inter- 
ests if generally espoused by the open- 
ing ministry of the day. Nor can you 
escape the longing that the same pen 
would give you a sketch of another Bay- 



THE BEAL MAN 43 

ard, who in church fellowship should work 
out his leadership. The present clay prob- 
lem, the burning question, is not how to 
conduct an independent mission, important 
as that may be : it is how to lead the 
great, strong, sleeping Church of God to 
Bayard's work! It is not how to touch 
low, needy life without the church — any one 
can do that — but how to touch it within 
the church, by making the church esteem 
her privilege and accept her responsibility. 
He who, in the eager, restrained, plodding, 
but uncompromising spirit of a determined 
leadership, quietly but increasingly infuses 
his own God-given convictions into the life 
of his church, and one by one opens blind 
eyes, unstops deaf ears, and quickens lag- 
ging footsteps, is a braver man than he 
who, loving "the garish day," turns his 
back upon the Church as anti-Christ, and 
single handed attempts to "hew Agag in 
pieces before the Lord." 

Do you know Bishop Welcome, that 
stately, sublime, and, above all, spiritual 
creation of Victor Hugo, in "Les Misera- 
bles"? Have you caught his spirit? To 
me he is the towering character in all fie- 



44 REAL PREACHING 

tion, — certainly the most ideal portraiture 
of a minister I have ever found. The first 
hundred pages of " Les Miserables " con- 
tain the choicest suggestions upon pastoral 
theology in literature, and by every ear- 
nest student should, in the solitude of his 
soul, in presence of his supreme life reso- 
lution, be carefully, even prayerfully, conned 
and lingered over till they are his own. 
A minister can always recover a flicker- 
ing confidence, or a receding courage, by 
an hour with Bishop Welcome. 

The Episcopal palace adjoined the hospi- 
tal. The palace was very grand; spacious 
its drawing-rooms, ample its chambers. The 
principal courtyard was large; the walks 
encircling it led beneath arcades in the 
old Florentine fashion, and in the gardens 
grew magnificent trees. The hospital was 
a small, one-story building, with a meagre 
garden. It was overcrowded. The bishop 
created unspeakable consternation by declar- 
ing at the outset that there must be some 
mistake. " There are thirty-six of you in 
five or six small rooms," said he to the 
director of the hospital. " There are three 
of us here, and we have room for sixty. 



THE BEAL MAN 45 

There is some mistake, I tell you ; you 
have my house, and I have yours." 

The bishop regulated his household ex- 
penses so that one fifteenth went to him- 
self and fourteen fifteenths to his work. 
He entered into the real lives of his flock 
and shared hardship with them. " He 
stripped himself!" The only luxury he 
would tolerate was his garden. This he 
kept in exquisite order. His haughty house- 
keeper reproved him, saying, "You, who 
turn everything to account, have at least 
one useless spot. It would be better to 
grow salads there than bouquets." " Mad- 
am," retorted the bishop, " you are mis- 
taken. The beautiful is as useful as the 
useful." He added after a pause, "More 
so, perhaps," 

The peasant bishop went to a synod once. 
He came back before the session was over. 
" I embarrassed them," he said. " I pro- 
duced on them the effect of an open door." 

He displeased his brother bishops. Among 
other strange things, it is said that in an 
Episcopal residence of marvelous beauty, he 
remarked, " What beautiful clocks ! What 
beautiful carpets ! They must be a great 



46 REAL PREACHING 

trouble. I would not have all those super- 
fluities crying incessantly in my ears : ' There 
are people who are hungry! There are peo- 
ple who are cold ! There are poor people ! 
There are poor people.' " 

He was leading others all the while. 

He gave the hospitality of his home 
once, with royal brotherhood, to an ex- 
convict and a tramp. His reward was, 
that the tramp stole his silver — his spoons 
and forks. Arrested and brought back by 
the police, judge the amazement of the 
culprit to hear the bishop take his part, 
declaring he had given not only these, but 
the valuable candlesticks as well. " Jean 
Valjean opened his eyes wide and stared 
at the venerable bishop with an expression 
which no human tongue can render any 
account of." 

" You may retire, gentlemen," said the 
bishop to the police. 

" Jean Valjean was like a man on the 
point of fainting. The bishop drew near 
to him and said in a low voice : ' Do not 
forget, never forget, that you have prom- 
ised to use this money in becoming an 
honest man.' 



THE REAL MAN 47 

M Jean Valjean, who had no recollection 
of ever having promised anything, remained 
speechless. The bishop emphasized the words 
when he nttered them. He resumed, with 
solemnity, 'Jean Valjean, my brother, you 
no longer belong to evil, but to good. It 
is your soul that I buy from you. I with- 
draw it from black thoughts and the spirit 
of perdition, and I give it to God.' ' 

Here was princely manhood. Here was 
royal leadership. Jean Valjean saw light 
for the first time that hour. His whole 
being was changed. He never saw the 
bishop again, but when that good man died 
the ex-convict put on mourning. He himself 
developed a wonderful character, and when 
the death dew was on his brow, and his 
friends asked him if he desired a priest, 
he simply said, " I had one once ! " 

The bishop was a real man, a true 
leader, rearing what he loved to call the 
most beautiful of altars, — " The soul of an 
unhappy creature consoled and thanking 
God/' " 

But the illustration of the u Real Man " 
is before us in life. We may be grate- 
fully proud that he is in our own denomi- 



48 REAL PREACHING 

nation. Easily the prince among our 
preachers, Dr. Richard Storrs is no less 
prince among our men. No honors were 
too choice for the celebration of the fiftieth 
anniversary of his ordination only a few 
weeks ago. But among all the gifts of 
the admiring, and the encomiums of the 
elect representatives from those wide-reach- 
ing spheres of life and thought, which he 
had so nobly dignified by his influence, or 
promoted by his patient and brilliant schol- 
arship, surely none was more grateful to 
him than the loving cup presented by 
his brothers in the sacred calling. The 
ivy about its brim spoke of the immortality 
of friendship. The water lily, delicately 
traced, symbolized that eloquence of which 
he is so charming a master, while the legend 
encircling all, not only italicized his own 
conviction, but fittingly expressed the great, 
deep-souled truth of a true preacher's essen- 
tial and real manhood. - 

" Sermo animi est imago : qualis vir, talis et 
oratio est." The sermon is the reflection of 
the soul: as is the man, so also is his 
utterance. 



ir 
THE REAL SERMON 



THE REAL SERMON 

The ecclesiastic has had his day, and his 
face is towards the setting sun. Gradually 
his power declines, for life is becoming too 
tense and the struggle between the modern 
Ormuzd of light and Ahriman of dark- 
ness too engaging to permit leadership in 
the person either of the spurious or the 
artificial. The ecclesiastic is the disciple of 
form, and the plea and demand of the 
world to-day is for faith, rugged, coura- 
geous, independent faith. 

The temptation to a ministry of mere 
exhibition is, happily, removed from modern 
life in a very large degree; but in its place 
has come a temptation opposite in charac- 
ter and no less pernicious in effect. 

It will one day be discovered that the 
minister as an executive is at quite as much 
of a remove from his real office as the 



52 REAL PREACHING 

mere ecclesiastic. The last quarter of a 
century lias witnessed the growth of spe- 
cialism everywhere. The student in college 
specializes. The country store no longer 
exists; in its place are half a dozen others. 
If the great department stores, which are 
a doubtful blessing, are a returning ap- 
proach to the country store, the approach 
is thoroughly vaccinated with the virus of 
specialization, for the store is really a 
dozen or twenty shops under one roof and 
one management. The doctor is a surgeon, 
an oculist, an aurist, and a general prac- 
titioner only to splice his slender resources 
till he can devote himself profitably to his 
chosen specialty. Likewise the lawyer; like- 
wise, too, the servant girl. The man of all 
work has become a restricted spirit; the 
inside man is one, the outside man an- 
other, and, like the Jews and Samaritans 
of old, they have no dealings with each 
other. 

The church is the last of all institutions 
to accept and adopt the principle. Most of 
our churches are conducted on the plan of 
the old country store, and where you find 
inefficient churches in cities of considerable 



THE REAL SERMON 53 

size, it will not infrequently be found that 
the reason is that these churches are being 
conducted on the same lines which were 
efficient when the city was a village, but 
which, -under municipal or metropolitan con- 
ditions, are woefully and sometimes ridicu- 
lously antique. To Garry the church over, 
and reinvigorate it with modern methods 
for present urgencies, is the task of most 
open-eyed ministers just at this present 
moment. 

This task brings the great temptation, 
especially to active temperaments, to be- 
come an executive ; to spend one's major 
forces in bringing things to pass ; to be 
transformed into a " religious promoter," a 
church " captain of industry." Many a 
time there seems to be nobody but the 
minister either to be concerned about the 
necessities or to provide for them, which 
makes the temptation greater and calls for 
a principle of resistance, the nerves of which 
shall be fed with the tonic of a definite con- 
ception of ministerial business and purpose. 
" Small considerations are the tomb of great 
things," and many a preacher is being 
ruined to-day to make an overseer or 



54 REAL PREACHING 

a floor-walker, an entry clerk or petty 
accountant in the church. 

Now the fact is that you can be but 
one thing predominantly; and still another 
fact is that the one great business of the 
minister is to be the evangelist, — the herald 
of glad tidings, the preacher of righteous- 
ness. If the influence of the pulpit de- 
clines, it will be because its moral author- 
ity has been weakened by reason of partial 
abandonment. Men have been planning 
societies instead of sermons. I confess my 
great concern for a remodeled church, but 
my even greater concern for a recovered 
pulpit. A minister's great occasion is his 
exposition of truth. If he minds his own 
business in royal fashion, all these other 
necessary things will be added unto him. 

I have never found a better definition of 
preaching than that given me when I was 
sitting, as you are, in presence of the cher- 
ished anticipation of future usefulness. 
" Preaching," said my honored professor, 
"is making men think and feel in propor- 
tion as they think. The sermon thus is 
truth clarified in thought and kindled in 
feeling. It is potential when completed in 



THE REAL SERMON 55 

the study; it is actual only when sent 
forth from the pulpit." 

"It takes two," says Thoreau, "to speak 
truth: one to speak; one to hear." The 
preparation is one ; the preaching is an- 
other: both make the sermon. 

Dr. Holmes tells us that if we want to 
be healthy we must have a care to select 
discreetly our ancestors, and by his pleas- 
ant wit reminds us that the sources of 
health are quite a remove from the supply 
of it. Healthy sermons have ancestors, 
antecedents. They are not made the week 
they are delivered. They are special drafts 
from fountains of living waters, which are 
fed from distant mountain springs. General 
preparation includes first, observation. 

John La Farge, lecturing to students in 
the Metropolitan museum at New York, 
speaks thus : "I remember how a well- 
known oculist, who had little experience 
with painters, tested the sight of a patient 
who was an artist. He was surprised at 
the artist's avoiding the traps that are laid 
to detect defects in sight. Said the doc- 
tor, ; I have only two cases of eyes with 
worse defects than yours, but I have never 



56 REAL PREACHING 

met any one who seemed to see so cor- 
rectly.' ' That,' answered the artist, ' is my 
profession. My profession is to see cor- 
rectly.' " 

It is your profession, as well, to see cor- 
rectly: to find sermons where the artist 
finds pictures, the novelist, romances, the 
poet, songs ; not of necessity specific ser- 
mons, but real homiletic material. 

Some one writing about the " Puritan in 
Art," says: "When I asked Mr. Broughton 
whether he contemplated painting any more 
Puritan pictures, he said, ' One does not 
contemplate subjects ; they come to you 
fully armed, and 3^ou have to do them.' : 

You can never tell when your observa- 
tion is to prove your homiletic salvation, 
but that it will is assured. 

Dr. R. F. Horton, upon a recent vaca- 
tion, saw the sun rise. He watched the glo- 
rious procession of the monarch of the day, 
and then remarked, "If that vision does 
not make me a better man, it is my 
fault, not God's." That was a soul cap- 
ture, in the early morning, far from his 
pulpit, but later the observation developed 
in one of his Lynhurst Road sermons really 



THE REAL SERMON 57 

made the sermon. School yourself to see ; 
it is your profession. 

Just here I desire to insert a plea for 
early travel for ministers. As part of your 
homiletic training, get in presence of new 
sights. Travel. I know you are poor. So 
are all ministers; so you will ever be; but 
travel. Get an early vision of some great 
world metropolis. Go to London ! You 
can, if you will pay the fare. The price 
of a bicycle will take you there and back. 
Probably not in the first cabin. Well, there 
is a world to observe in the steerage. A 
vision of Westminster ; a service in St. 
Paul's ; a ride along the Strand on an 
omnibus ; a meeting in St. James Park, 
where socialists, anarchists, nihilists, and 
every son of man who has a hobby to 
ride is in fine fettle, will be worth a 
whole year amid familiar scenes and native 
surroundings. But, wherever you are, train 
yourself to see beneath the surface. 

The second characteristic of general prep- 
aration is reading. 

John Wesley once said that a Christian 
had no more right to be a gentleman than 
a dancing master. He meant that a man's 



58 REAL PEE ACHING 

religion was to be the preeminent thing 
about him. Your religion is the preemi- 
nent thing about you, and your sermon is 
the choice opportunity for you to deliver 
yourself. But you, yourself, are made by 
what you feed upon, and your reading is 
food. 

Some plead for old books. There are 
only a dozen or two of men who have 
really influenced the world by contribution. 
The rest are imitators. Drink at the 
spring, they say. But there is always 
something musty about such a man's ser- 
mons. Some plead for one Book. Be men 
of one Book — the Bible. 

A young friend of mine, fitting himself 
to be an evangelist, once said to me in my 
library, in the presence of the works of 
many master minds, ancient and modern, that 
he had determined to know only one book 
— his Bible. History, literature, magazines 
and newspapers were henceforth to be dis- 
missed, and the blessed Bible was to be-^ 
come his meat day and night, in order 
that he might preach a pure and uncon- 
taminated gospel. It is useless to argue 
with, much less to advise, such a soul, 



THE BEAL SERMON 59 

and therefore I simply said, " If ever you 
feel the need of reading any other book 
besides the Bible, I would be glad to help 
you to a wise selection." He worked out 
his own blunder, and came ■ back for the 
books. Experience is a great thing for a 
young preacher. 

You are to preach to the people, and 
therefore you are to know a little about a 
great many things. The old adage, that 
it is better to know one thing well than 
to know a great many things partially, has 
decided limitations and exceptions. The 
minister who specializes his reading will be 
very likely to widen the gulf between his 
pulpit and the pews. 

It is a good plan to keep half a dozen 
courses of reading on hand all the time. 
I am speaking now my own experience, 
and, therefore, make bold to illustrate from 
my own study. Just now on my table are 
three poets : Browning — he is always there ; 
Kipling, with his billowy Seven Seas ; Paul 
Dunbar, the first colored American poet, 
with his remarkable dialect songs. The 
novel is " Quo Vadis," the latest work of 
the Polish Sienkiewicz ; the history is of 



60 REAL PREACHING 

Poland; the biography is " Life of George 
Romanes " ; the theology is, two volumes 
upon God, by Professor Harris of Yale, 
and " Moral Evolution," by Professor George 
Harris of Andover, which has passed to a 
third reading; the homiletic is Van Dyke's 
" Gospel for an Age of Doubt," and Mr. 
Nicoll's "When Worst Comes to Worst." 

One reads and reads and reads in such 
companionship, and finds that he grows. 
You should devour some books — you will. 
You should detest others — you will. And 
both processes will have homiletic value. 
The truth is, there are different ways of 
reading. You read different things for dif- 
ferent purposes, and the purpose covers the 
method. Some books you skim; some you 
study. In the one case, your quest is 
illustration; in the other, ideas. The first 
may be a novel; the second, a theology. 

Current magazine literature is specially 
valuable. Take all the magazines you can, 
and borrow the reading of what you cannot 
personally afford. An illustration drawn 
from a common source has very great 
power over the people who have met it in 
its home. It gratifies them to feel that 



THE REAL SERMON 61 

they have noticed it themselves, and all 
the more that you, the minister, have 
noticed it, too. Do not be ashamed to be 
known as a great reader, or a rapid reader; 
it is an essential of your equipment. It 
makes a full man. 

The training of the memory is a third 
characteristic of general preparation. 

The advance of civilization has for its 
inevitable counterpart the retreat of capa- 
bility. New abilities arise, to be sure, but 
old ones retire. Gladly do we confess 
gain, upon the whole, but sadly, too, we 
plead guilty to special and deplorable 
losses. Fingers grow less deft, for machin- 
ery works in place of them. The eye will 
never be more keen because spectacles do 
its work for it. No more will Hercules be 
found among men, or Atlas bearing a world 
upon his shoulders, because we have 
hydraulic lifts to do their ponderous 
feats. 

The marvel of the Old World to a lit- 
erary man is the extent to which the 
memory was trained. One longs to sit at 
one of those old banquets and hear some 
learned slave recite book after book of 



62 REAL P BEACHING 

ancient lore. The absence of the printing- 
press was a blessing to memory; the pres- 
ence of it is the bane of memory. No 
man needs his memory more than a minis- 
ter, and the young minister who wakes up 
to this truth and begins at twenty-five to 
train and develop his memory, will bless 
the day he began, a score of years hence. 

Jonathan Edwards began early, and used 
to pin a bit of paper on his coat as he 
walked, to represent every idea which he 
would detain, to be put in irons later, and 
sometimes when he came home his coat 
would be white with the pickets of his 
ideas. 

Thoughts, worthy, suggestive, and vital,, 
are frequently compacted into a sentence. 
Hold the sentence, and you hold the 
thought. The man who has in his mind 
a company of thought-laden sentences, will 
never cherish that idle brain which in 
ministers, as in others, is the devil's work- 
shop. 

Poetry enshrines the very noblest of 
human conceptions. To commit poetry to 
memory is never a waste of time. For a 
minister, there is hardly a more compen- 



THE REAL SERMON 63 

sating occupation. The temptation of reacU 
ing is to allow it to become a luxury 
rather than a labor, an affair of comfort 
rather than of conscience. It may be tan- 
talizing to stop in the midst of an excit- 
ing passage to capture a luminous idea 
set in a unique phrase or fine sentence, 
but the promise you make, as you hasten 
on, that you will return later to the jewel, 
is almost never fulfilled, and a distinct loss 
to your mental integrity, as well as equip- 
ment, is the result. The conscientious train- 
ing of the memory, the making your own, 
with whatever labor, the best things others 
have said and written, is one of the open 
secrets of a good sermonizer. 

Meditation is first assistant to the memory. 

Charles Darwin was accustomed to greet 
his favorite pupil, George John Romanes, 
with outstretched hand, a bright smile, and 
the quiet exclamation, " How glad I am 
that you are so young ! " And then the 
great scientist would seriously advise his 
young friend, "Above all, Romanes, culti- 
vate the habit of meditation." 

Introduction to a new idea, flashing in a 
novel, glistening in a poem, or embedded 



64 REAL PREACHING 

deep in a theological volume, is a critical 
moment for you. The idea will never 
come again as it does now. It has at 
this moment attendants ; it is escorted by 
a brilliant pageant of retainers ; it suggests 
a whole fraternity of allied conceptions. If 
you excuse yourself from further compan- 
ionship with this idea on account of press- 
ing engagements, and in your selfish rude- 
ness hasten on with your story, your mono- 
graph, your poem, when at your lordly 
convenience you come back, the idea has 
excused itself from you, and you will have 
to confess, as somebody does about departed 
youth, — 

" Something beautiful has vanished, 
And we search for it in vain; 
We behold it everywhere — 
On the earth and in the air, 
But it never comes again." 

The ghost of a snubbed idea will haunt 
a minister's mind, sting his conscience, and 
generally disturb his peace in a way abso- 
lutely unique among all the weird caprices 
of these shadowy forms. An idea hospi- 
tably entertained, memorized, meditated upon, 



THE REAL SERMON 65 

will become a contribution to one's mental 
capital, which will pay compound interest, 
and which will never pass a dividend. 

I remember to have heard Dr. Lyman Ab- 
bott say that his literary habit was to read 
a little, and then think about what he had 
read. You must hold yourself under strict 
discipline if you would be a profitable reader. 
A traveler may cover many miles in a day, 
but when he arrives at a city, he must 
tarry long enough to get into the life of 
the place, if he is to appreciate it or it is 
to influence him. The secret of good read- 
ing is knowing when you are in the city, 
and compelling yourself to stay there till 
the city gets into you. 

Note books are second assistants to the 
memory. Jewett, master of Balliol, could 
not too strongly urge his students to keep 
commonplace-books, citing his own habit as 
illustration, while this advice from Charles 
Kingsley, reveals the source of the versatil- 
ity of his own style : — 

"Keep a commonplace-book, and put into 
it not only facts and thoughts, but observa- 
tions on form and color and nature, and little 
sketches, even to the form of beautiful leaves. 



66 REAL PREACHING 

They will all have their charm, all do their 
work in consolidating your ideas. Put every- 
thing into it. Strive to put every idea into a 
tangible form, and write it down." 

This is a practical way of keeping your 
memory in line. 

I was in a minister's study not long 
since, in which was a great letter case ar- 
ranged for " clippings." He always reads 
with a blue pencil ; his stenographer clips 
and files. That is one way of preserving 
material. This minister's sermons always 
betray his method — scrappy. 

An elaborate system of note taking is 
unprofitable, but certain notes are essential. 
Have a note-book, a fountain pen, a bottle 
of mucilage, and a pair of scissors always 
at hand. Read with your note-book at hand. 
Put into it everything which has homiletic 
value, with your comment. Read it over 
frequently. It will be invaluable. Old Cap- 
tain Cuttle had a monstrous truth alongside 
when he gave the order — " When found 
make a note of." 

The special preparation of the sermon must 
now engage our attention. 

Whatever may be said to you upon this 



THE REAL SERMON 67 

subject must be of general, rather than of 
minute, suggestion. The inevitable fact is, 
that next Sunday comes not only promptly, 
but always with the unexpected celerity of 
those things that travel in seven-league 
boots. And with the coming Sunday, the 
work must be accomplished. Some toil 
specifically at the sermons all the week. 
They get the text Monday; write intro- 
duction Tuesday ; first point, Wednesday ; 
second, Thursday ; third, Friday ; revise, 
Saturday; and trust in the Lord for what 
they are to say at the second service Sun- 
day, and find that in the hands of the 
aforesaid trusted Lord they are " reeds 
shaken by the wind." Others wait till 
Saturday, and barn the midnight oil. Occa- 
sionally, one like Beecher does his specific 
work Sunday morning. To every man ac- 
cording to his several ability. Some work 
with great rapidity, others plod. No rule 
can be laid down for the special prepara- 
tion of a sermon, but every man must 
bear his own burden. There is, however, 
this which is absolute. No tyranny is so 
cruel as that of a dissipated homiletic habit. 
No slave ever drudges in utter loyalty for 



68 REAL PREACHING 

its master like the homiletic habit when 
once it has been thoroughly mastered. 

It is said of Dr. F. L. Patton, the bril- 
liant president of Princeton and the incisive 
preacher, that he will plan a sermon on 
the back of an envelope on his way to 
its delivery. It is conceivable. He is a 
professor of ethics and philosophy, a Bible 
student, a great leader. Once let his mind 
accept a theme, and from every direction 
his thoughts and illustrations come flocking 
like doves to their windows. But Presi- 
dent Patton and Beecher are the experts, 
not the beginners. They illustrate, how- 
ever, the essential thing for you to acquire, 
namely, the mastery of the homiletic habit. 
If the habit masters you, alas for you ! If 
you master it, your joy in preaching is 
assured. 

A good reader and observer will always 
have plenty of themes. The difficulty of 
selection from a good stock of subjects is, 
on the whole, more to be desired than 
that of a forced three days' journey into 
the wilderness each week in search of one. 

One of the brightest of our young Mas- 
sachusetts preachers, speaking of his ser- 



THE REAL SERMON 69 

mons, said, " I always have a number of 
themes in my mind. When I want a ser- 
mon, I stick my homiletic fork into them 
as a cook does into boiling potatoes to see 
if they are done. I choose the one near- 
est cooked, give it special fire, and use it 
Sunday." 

The theme in mind, it is a valuable 
exercise to read its opposite. If you are 
to preach on love, read about hate ; if 
about the spring and flowers — don't do it 
too often, — read about winter and roots ; if 
about hope, get the literature of despair. 
Your mind will fly for refuge to the oppo- 
site pole, and there you frequently will 
catch your sermon in hiding. It is safe 
to wait for the plan to come and lay its 
sword at your feet, like a knight before 
the fair lady, if you are really engaged in 
mastering your theme. Plans are like — 

"The snowflake on the river, 
A moment seen, then gone forever." 

Woe to the man who has to go in 
search of pen and note-book when a plan 
sends its light athwart his dark pathway! 
He will find it darker than before, when 



70 REAL PREACHING 

he comes to attempt the capture of the 
eluded vision. Write down every plan, 
good, bad, indifferent, which comes to you, 
when it comes. Write out in full all 
illustrations suggested. Write page after 
page of ideas with the freedom and aban- 
don of a pen driven by a time limit. Do 
not fear if the week hastens to its clos- 
ing; you are getting ready. The plan 
will come in a moment, in the twinkling 
of an eye, and the elaborated ideas and 
illustrations will fall into line as regularly 
and as surprisingly as a company of well- 
drilled soldiers when the call "To arms!" 
summons them from their slumber. 

One of the luxuries of a faithful minis- 
ter's homiletic experiences is that at even- 
tide, when it is light, an hour's work sets 
in order a week's labor. The sense of mas- 
tery is most refreshing. 

The question of the preaching of the 
prepared sermon is one which will be 
answered largely by a man's own habit. 
The exact writer is quite liable to scorn 
the exclamatory speaker; and the man 
whose flowing speech can sway an audi- 
ence is not always sure that there is room 



THE REAL SERMON 71 

in the world for the quiet speech and 
elegant diction of the disciple of the 
manuscript. 

The pastor of one of our great churches 
traveled for his health, not long since, across 
the sea. His physician would not allow 
him to preach, so he was obliged to attend 
church and listen to his brethren. On his 
return to his own country, he made the 
startling announcement that the only effect- 
ive sermons he heard were from manu- 
script; that the extemporaneous or spoken 
sermons were all sonorous, on the sound- 
ing brass or tinkling cymbal order, and he 
drew the conclusion that the written ser- 
mon is the only proper method of pulpit 
address. Now the fact is, that this min- 
ister preaches, himself, a strong, able, writ- 
ten sermon; but his own extemporaneous 
utterances are as dreary as the monotonous 
tinkle of a bell-buoy in the fog. He wishes 
he could, but he cannot, deliver with effect 
a spoken sermon, and because he cannot, 
it is, of course, a serious question whether 
it is not a reflection on himself to admit 
that anybody can or does. There is just 
a suggestion of prejudice in his opinion. 



72 REAL PREACHING 

It will be conceded, I think, that the 
spoken sermon for the average audience is 
the great present demand. Times are too 
rushing; the defiance of the gospel too 
spiteful; the crying need of the world too 
piteous, to allow the calm, deliberate, un- 
impassioned utterance of truth to carry 
men over to highest resolutions and noblest 
endeavors. A great occasion in public life, 
a threatening war, an overshadowing calam- 
ity, always stirs the extemporaneous habit. 
Heat expands ; it is difficult to confine it 
within walls of iron. It is a distinct 
advantage to have one's whole self to 
bestow upon an audience, and however a 
man may boast — and every man does — that 
he is not hampered by his notes, still the 
care of his manuscript is a subtraction 
from himself, and, in so far, from his effi- 
ciency. Because the spoken sermon is the 
sermon at its best, every student should 
strive for it. The great majority can 
become effective extemporaneous preachers, 
if willing to make a sufficiently strenuous 
effort. 

Darwin once encouraged Romanes in a 
certain grafting failure, by saying, " Trol- 



THE REAL SERMON 73 

lope, in one of his novels, gives us a 
maxim of constant use by a brickmaker, 
; It is dogged as does it,' and I have often 
thought this is the motto for every scien- 
tific worker." Yea, verily, and for every 
homiletical worker, too. "It is dogged as 
does it," young gentlemen; not facility, 
not natural gifts ; these are usually barri- 
ers to an effective extemporaneous habit. 
Relying on these, you substitute for a ser- 
mon merely an utterance. 

Said a presiding elder to me about a 
young preacher in whom we were both 
interested, " Young men are so foolish ! " 
Our friend was appointed to preach at 
camp-meeting. It was an honor, as well 
as a responsibility. He worked hard upon 
his sermon, but when it came time to 
preach, judge my surprise to hear him say 
that as he had been sitting under the 
green trees that day, the Lord had given 
him a different message from that he had 
prepared. Thereupon he announced that 
holy text : " Ye shall receive power, after 
that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." 
"For two minutes," said the grim elder, 
with a smile, "all was well, but for the 



74 REAL PREACHING 

other twenty-eight he said nothing, but 
roared 'like a pelican in the wilderness.' " 

" Roaring like a pelican in the wilderness" 
is not extemporaneous preaching. It is too 
easy, too frothy, too purely animal for that. 
The spoken sermon, at its best, is the 
evolved sermon. It comes up through the 
written and the memorized. It is based 
upon these. It is a triumph of habit, a 
goal of long-planned and long-prosecuted 
endeavor. There is no escape from careful 
writing and painstaking elaboration for any 
man who w r ould by any method preach his 
noblest. 

The memorized sermon is a step in ad- 
vance of the written sermon. It is the 
written sermon delivered through the mem- 
ory rather than through the eye. It need 
not be an exercise in elocution or resemble 
the performance of a public reader: it can 
be natural, effective, and almost sponta- 
neous. 

The memorizing method will quicken the 
eagerness for the spoken method. It is a 
sort of look into the promised land. It is 
the second step toward the spoken sermon. 
To attempt it, you will need as much 



THE REAL SERMON 75 

heroism as a general must summon who 
goes a-wooing. 

How at this moment my own experience 
comes back ! I was preaching in a small 
fishing village on the back side of Cape 
Cod. The church was upon the beach, 
and the pounding of the great, white- 
capped billows on the shore punctuated 
for me my discourse in the morning, for 
I could distinctly hear them. A storm 
arose, and in preparing for the second ser- 
vice I was challenged with the idea of 
leaving my manuscript and preaching the 
sermon from memory. I was very familiar 
with the sermon. I only had two, and 
every theologue is thoroughly acquainted 
with the " first-born" among his homiletic 
progeny. . I thought the waves would help 
me out if I broke down. I resolved to 
try. It was, soberly, a great resolution. 

The audience was small. The text was 
announced, and never did the whistling 
winds of the old Atlantic chase each other 
with greater celerity across those sandy 
wastes than did my swift-footed words in 
their half-terrified and half-exhilarated scram- 
ble- for the end of the discourse. I trip- 



76 REAL PREACHING 

ped, but eagerly pressed on ! Once I 
tumbled down, but not waiting even to 
brush the dirt off, or pity myself because 
I had been bumped, I pressed on, and fin- 
ished. It was hard on the audience. Not 
many complimented the effort, but it was 
my great sermon. It revealed to me a 
new and powerful approach to men. I 
followed the method till I could preach 
with composure out of my memory. This 
method is excellent discipline for the mind, 
and is usually acceptable to the people. 

The spoken sermon is a great consumer 
of homiietic material. You cannot econo- 
mize. You must be lavish, even prodigal. 
Your hearers must be delivered from the 
idea either that you are walking in slip- 
pery places, or that you are skirting the 
borderland of your mental preserves. They 
must be impressed with the idea that there 
is behind your utterance a great reserve, 
and respect for your reserve is cultivated 
by your generous packing of every sermon 
with virile but versatile thought and apt 
illustration. The aspirant for the extempo- 
raneous ability must be, beyond others, a 
wide observer, an omnivorous reader, and a 



THE REAL SERMON 77 

constant thinker, otherwise he will preach 
in a small circle, illustrate every sin by 
drunkenness, every virtue by charity, and 
begin his home-made illustrations with 
"When I was in Europe," or words to 
that effect. Will Carleton's "Traveled Par- 
son" illustrates the good small preacher: 

"And the way he went for Europe! oh, the way 

he scampered through it! 
Not a mountain but he clim' it — not a city but he 

knew it; 
There wasn't any subject to explain, in all crea- 
tion, 
But he could go to Europe and bring back an 

illustration! 
So we crowded out to hear him, quite instructed 

and delighted; 
'T was a picture show, a lecture, and a sermon — 

all united; 
And my wife would rub her glasses, and serenely 

pet her Test'ment, 
And whisper, 'That 'ere ticket was a splendid 

good investment.' 

Now after six months' travel, we was most of us 

all ready 
To settle down a little, so's to live more staid 

and steady; 
To develop home resources, with no foreign cares 

to fret us, 



78 BEAL PREACHING 

Using home-made faith more frequent; but our 

parson wouldn't let us! 
To view the same old scenery, time and time 

again he 'd call us — 
Over rivers, plains, and mountains he would any 

minute haul us; 
He slighted our soul sorrows, and our spirits' 

aches and ailings, 
To get the cargo ready for his regular Sunday 

sailings! 
Why, he'd take us off a-touring, in all spiritual 

weather, 
Till we at last got homesick and seasick all 

together! 
And 'I wish to all that's peaceful,' said one 

free-expressioned brother, 
'That the Lord had made one cont'nent, an' 

then never made another!' 

Sometimes, indeed, he 'd take us into old, famil- 
iar places, 

And pull along quite nat'ral, in the good old 
Gospel traces; 

But soon my wife would shudder, just as if a 
chill had got her, 

Whispering, 'Oh, my goodness gracious! he's 
a-takin' to the water!'" 

Further quotation is unnecessary, but the 
traveled parson is a warning to every stu- 
dent to have more than one ability. 



THE REAL SERMON 79 

Goethe's pet compliment was that he was 
a man of panoramic ability. 

The three great characteristics of a 
spoken sermon are point, picture, and 
passion. One is to have some distinct 
thing to say ; one is to picture his thought ; 
one is to glow in saying it. The analysis 
must be clean, the points in as few words 
as possible. The illustration must be apt. 
Some decry illustration as taking the place 
of thought. Illustration is thought. One 
good illustration will provoke more thought 
than a dozen finely-spun and intricately- 
woven sentences. The story-teller in the 
pulpit is a pigmy, but the illustrator is a 
giant. Whitefield is a fine example. He 
could describe a storm and a shipwrecked 
crew with such vivid reality that when in the 
critical moment he exclaimed, " What next?" 
an auditor could not help exclaiming, " For 
God's sake, man the life-boat ! " 

Benjamin Franklin knew Whitefield well, 
and tells a story of going to hear him preach 
for his orphanage in Georgia, with which 
Mr. Franklin had no sympathy. " I silently 
resolved," says Franklin, "that he should 
get nothing from me. I had in my 



80 BEAL PEE ACHING 

pocket a handful of copper money, three 
or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in 
gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, 
and concluded to give the coppers. Another 
stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of 
that, and determined me to give the silver; 
and he finished so admirablv, that I 
emptied my pocket wholly into the collect- 
or's dish, gold and all." Descriptive preach- 
ing which can empty pockets like that is 
despised by any minister at his peril. 

The spoken sermon presents the oppor- 
tunity of expressing passion. This is the 
great lack in the modern pulpit. A whole- 
some respect for proprieties has become 
impudently monarchical, and relegated 
passion to the Methodists and the Salva- 
tion Army. The result is, the Methodists 
are eagerly sought for Congregational pulpits, 
and the Salvation Army has, as it should, 
a cordial welcome at our Congregational 
hearthstones. Do not, I beg of you, young 
men, do not be afraid to wear your heart 
on your sleeve. A tear is not unmanly — 
if it is a manly tear. If every Congrega- 
tional minister were unable to preach next 
Sunday without weeping, there would be 



THE BEAL SEBMON 81 

a transformation in the congregations which 
would be astonishing. Throw your whole 
self into your sermon. Preach, not in the 
old phrase as a " dying man to dying men," 
but, as a " living man to living men." Get 
beneath the sense of the supreme splendor 
of your privilege. Bushnell said, — " No other 
calling would permit me sufficiently to be." 

There are multitudes of sermons like that 
which Elspeth Macfadyen heard "Maister 
Popinjay" preach, — Mr. Popinjay, "as neat 
an' fikey a little mannie as ever a' saw 
in a black goon. His bit sermon wes six 
poems — five a' hed heard afore— four anec- 
dotes — three aboot himsel' and ain aboot a 
lord — twa burnies, ae floo'r gairden, and a 
snowstorm, wi' the text thirteen times, 
and 'beloved' twal." 

Ah, this is a different thing from the 
impassioned utterance which fell from the 
lips of the young preacher of Drumtochty 
when he delivered his first sermon — his 
mother's sermon. His mother, in the lin- 
gering moments before entrance into the city 
which hath no need of the sun, had said 
to her boy, "If God calls ye to the min- 
istry, ye 'ill no refuse, an' the first day ye 



82 REAL PREACHING 

preach in yir ain kirk, speak a gude word for 
Jesus Christ, an', John, I'll hear ye that 
day, though ye 'ill no see me, and I '11 be 
satisfied." 

Years passed, education was finished, 
the call accepted, and the preparation 
for the first sermon had been com- 
pleted. "He had finished its last page 
with honest pride that afternoon, and had 
declaimed it, facing the southern window, 
with a success that amazed himself. His 
hope was that he might be kept humble, 
and not called to Edinburgh for at least 
two years; and now he lifted the sheets 
with fear. The brilliant opening, with its 
historical parallel, this review of modern 
thought reinforced by telling quotations, 
that trenchant criticism of old-fashioned 
views, would not deliver." 

His audience had vanished, and in its 
place was one sweet face, and "then in 
the stillness of the room he heard a voice, 
'Speak a gude word for Jesus Christ.' 
Next minute he was kneeling on the hearth, 
and pressing the magnum opus, that was to 
shake Drumtochty, into the heart of the 
red fire, and he saw, half smiling and half 



THE REAL SERMON 83 

weeping, the impressive words, 'Semitic 
environment' shrivel up and disappear. As 
the last black flake fluttered out of sight, 
the face looked at him again, but this time 
the sweet, brown eyes were full of 
peace." 

Next day John went to his pulpit re- 
splendent in gown and band, without his 
notes to be sure, but with his heart. 
His " gude word for Jesus " found the 
hearts of his hearers. Donald Menzies 
said, " There was a man sent from God, 
whose name was John." 

Genuine, heartfelt, hot-souled, " gude 
words for Jesus Christ" are not only the 
great urgency, but the rewarding satisfac- 
tions of our modern pulpit. Great souls 
are won, not by argument, but by sin- 
cerity. 

Eecall the noble fancy through which a 
great English poet has taught this truth. 
It is Christmas Eve, and out from a little 
nonconformist chapel pompously strides a 
man whose sensibilities have been outraged 
by the plebeian crowd, the coarse worship, 
the illiterate discourse. Congratulating him- 
self that he is not as other men are, and 



84 REAL PREACHING 

that Nature is his church, he suddenly 
beholds a vision of Christ, but from him 
the Master's face is turned, because he has 
despised Christ's friends. Eagerly does he 
pray for pardon, when, enfolded in the 
garments of the Lord, he is transported to 
St. Peter's at Rome, where the majestic 
service is being conducted in presence of a 
great multitude. He sees the formalism, 
the ritual, the error, but underneath it all 
he cannot be blind to the love which here 
finds an imperfect expression. Again he is 
transported to the lecture-room of a Ger- 
man professor where the " Christ myth " is 
being analyzed, and where the " pearl of 
great price " is being pulverized to dust 
and ashes, but where as a last word the 
professor bids his students " venerate the 
myth," and here again he cannot fail to 
see a glimmer of love. Back now to the 
chapel, and all that seemed so crude, so 
revolting, is clothed in the radiant gar- 
ments of a new light. The old defects 
exist — a new spirit transforms them. 

" First, the preacher speaks through his nose: 
Second, his gestures are too emphatic: 



THE REAL SERMON 85 

Thirdly, to waive what 's pedagogic, 
The subject matter itself lacks logic. 
Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic. 



" Great news! the sermon proves no reading 
Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me 
Like Taylor's, the immortal Jeremy! 
And now that I know the very worst of him, 
What was it I thought to obtain at first of 
him? 

* * * * * 

"It were to be wished the flaws were fewer 
In the earthen vessel, holding treasure 
Which lies as safe in a golden ewer; 
But the main thing is, does it hold good 

measure? 
Heaven soon sets right all other matters!" 

The result of it all is, that in spite of 
the plain house, peasant congregation, illogic- 
al preaching, since love is here, our pomp- 
ous friend, humbled and enlightened by 
Christ's evidence of love, himself joins the 
humble company and becomes an admiring 
parishioner of the illiterate, but intense and 
genuine, dominie. 

"I put up pencil and join chorus 

To Hepsibah tune, without further apology, 



86 REAL PREACHING 

The last five verses of the third section 
Of the seventeenth hymn of WhitefielcTs Col- 
lection, 
To conclude with the doxology." 

The real sermon thus is truth kindled by 
the hot fires of an earnest purpose and a 
sincere heart. That man will preach who 
will deliver himself in God's stead ; others 
will but parley. 

Young gentlemen, with all my soul I 
congratulate you that you are entering the 
ministry to-day. It is a wonderful time to 
be alive. Bring the abandon, the enthusi- 
asm, the heart of your young lives with 
you. Cultivate passion, restrained, con- 
trolled, but burning, flaming passion. It 
will give you your approach to men; it 
will undergird your preaching, for preach- 
ing is not alone making men think; it is 
making them feel in proportion as they 
think. 

Archbishop Sutton is said to have given 
Bishop Heber, on his consecration to the 
See of Calcutta, this charge : " Place before 
your eyes two precepts, and two only. One 
is, Preach the Gospel; the other is, Put 
down enthusiasm ! " Herein, like the call of 



THE REAL SERMON 87 

Mohammed's prophet to prayer, is a great 
truth yoked to a great lie. Let us have the 
whole truth! Place before your eyes two 
purposes: Preach the Gospel; punctuate your 
preaching with enthusiasm. 



Ill 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 

Some years ago, when the perennial 
question of the evening worship was agi- 
tating the minds of many ministers who 
were discouraged by the meager attendance 
upon the second service, one of our most 
scholarly, eloquent, and spiritual leaders, 
whose church, crowded in the morning to 
the doors, had in the chapel in the even- 
ing but here and there a traveler, wrote 
an article to the effect that the real ques- 
tion about any service is not, What is 
there ? but, Who is there ? 

A young brother, who was reveling at 
the time in a full congregation at the sec- 
ond service, but who has had his expe- 
rience since in ministering to vacant pews 
at eventide, in his conceit regarded the 
above statement as an apology for ill suc- 
cess, as a clever hiding place from the 

91 



92 REAL PREACHING 

storm. But gradually the suggestive truth 
has risen upon him, and he understands 
that the what of an assembly is insignifi- 
cant when compared with the who of it. 

Your congregation consists of what is 
there, the mere numerical total ; your audi- 
ence of who is there, the roster of spiritual 
or soul presence. 

We are so infatuated with modern book- 
keeping that the usher's tally will elevate or 
depress our spirits as it grows or shrinks. 
The size of the congregation lords it over 
the spirit of the audience. 

Some time, when the present ebbing spir- 
itual tide flows again, the real estimate of 
assemblies will obtain even among church 
officers. The tally will be ordered to the 
rear; the spirit will again take the field. 
You see your congregation; your audience 
sees you. You dismiss your congregation, 
but your audience cannot be divorced from 
you. 

When "heart leaps forth to wed with 
heart ere thought can wed itself with 
speech;" when spirits fellowship, time stops 
the clock and eternity begins. The con- 
gregation thus is the transient; the audi- 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 93 

ence, the everlasting. You change your 
parish; your congregation becomes the con- 
cern of your successor, but your audience 
is still your own. Neither shall any man 
pluck it out of your hands. The actor is 
seeking a congregation ; without it, he quits 
the stage. The minister yearns for an 
audience ; once let him secure it, and he 
has fulfilled his ministry. The woman of 
Samaria was, as a congregation, small, but 
as an audience, of more value than all 
the scribes and Pharisees Christ ever ad- 
dressed. 

Francis Xavier, born of lordly and noble 
but impoverished parents, early developed 
special literary ability, so that his father, 
in the amplitude of a generous heart, 
"strained his slender resources" to send 
the promising son to the University of 
Paris. Nor were the fond parent's expec- 
tations quenched, for the brilliant son in 
time became a lecturer upon the Aristote- 
lian philosophy, and gathered about him 
a large company of rich and noble stu- 
dents, admiring his genius and hanging 
upon his words. One day he spied among 
the company of the great and gay, a stern- 



94 REAL PREACHING 

visaged, sordidly-clad individual, whose con- 
tinued presence furnished the occasion of 
many a witty sally and contemptuous sar- 
casm. But Ignatius Loyola could not 
thus be driven from Xavier's lecture-room. 
The students were Xavier's congregation ; 
Loyola alone was his aadience. Loyola 
saw Xavier's soul. Beneath all the aca- 
demic rubbish it glistened like a diamond. 
Xavier's words gripped Loyola's spirit with 
hooks of steel. The spiritual affinity could 
not be dissolved by Xavier's impatient, 
impudent and insulting manner and address. 
Loyola followed him everywhere, — to his 
lectures, to his lodging, — and always con- 
cluded every interview with the pointed 
query : " What shall it profit a man, if he 
shall gain the whole world, and lose his 
own soul ? " The congregation after a 
while deserted Xavier; the audience re- 
mained. When Xavier, in despair, aban- 
doned himself and followed evil courses, 
Loyola was close to him, meeting his ne- 
cessities with the patience of a great con- 
fidence, and always accompanying his min- 
istry with his searching question. 

At last the tables turn. The lecturer 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 95 

becomes audience ; the audience becomes 
lecturer. Xavier becomes a disciple of 
Loyola, and by his sacrificial fidelity, one 
of the most immortal of the missionaries 
of the cross. What a distance, by spiritual 
measure, from the frozen sarcasm of the 
academic lecture-room, to the impassioned 
utterance of the dying saint, raising himself 
on his crucifix from the cold sands by the 
waters of a foreign sea, and exclaiming, 
his face " irradiated as with the first beams 
of approaching glory," — "In te, Domine, 
speravi — non confundar in oeternum." 

The illustration incidentally reveals the 
very inspiring truth of the reciprocal in- 
fluence of the audience upon the speaker, 
but its primary mission is to emphasize our 
fundamental contention that the important 
question concerning any assemblage is not 
what, but tvho, is there. The congregation 
hears the speech ; the audience listens to 
the spirit. The congregation will forget 
your words — 

" They fly forgotten, as a dream 
Dies at the opening day. 1 ' 

The audience will remember your meaning, 



96 BEAL P BE ACHING 

and will not only remember but will re- 
incarnate it in themselves. 

The great desideratum of a preacher is 
not a congregation, but an audience. A 
growing audience is not incompatible with 
a diminishing congregation. Nor is a dimin- 
ishing congregation, thank God, an inevita- 
ble attendant of a growing audience ! 

It takes, then, a real man to discover 
an audience and develop a congregation, 
for, as Mrs. Browning so pithily re- 
marks, — 

"It takes a soul 
To move a body; it takes a high-souled man 
To move the masses, — even to a cleaner stye; 
It takes the ideal to blow a hair's breadth off 
The dust of the actual." 

This audience of which I have been 
speaking, which is an open soul into which 
you pour spiritual nectar which has been 
distilled in your own, is not always in 
evidence. You do not recognize it at the 
time it listens to you. You will never 
appreciate its full importance, and will only 
catch glimpses of its presence now and 
then, when some disturbance of sorrow or 
sickness in others' lives, or some change 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 97 

in your own plan or parish calls it in 
grateful acknowledgment from its hiding. 

Dr. Dale, in a lecture about the congre- 
gation helping the minister, relates the 
following : 

There are times when the most buoyant sink 
into despondency, when a gray, chilly mist 
creeps over the soul of those who have the 
largest happiness in the service of God, and 
when they feel as if all their strength was 
gone. Not very long ago, if I may venture 
once more to speak about myself, one of these 
evil moods was upon me; but as I was pass- 
ing along one of the streets of Birmingham, a 
poor but decently-dressed woman, laden with 
parcels, stopped me, and said, "God bless you, 
Dr. Dale!" Her face was unknown to me. I 
said, "Thank you, but what is your name?" 
"Never mind my name," she answered, "but 
if you could only know how you have made 
me feel hundreds of times, and what a happy 
home you h'ave given me! God bless you!" 
The mist broke; the sunlight came. I breathed 
the free air of the mountains of God. 

A minister, having changed his parish, 
was passing through the city in which his 
former church was located, when a hack- 
man stopped and, touching his hat, said, 



98 REAL PREACHING 

" Glad to see you back, Doctor. I used 
often to hear you preach in your church, 
and it 's mighty sorry a lot of us are to 
have you gone ! " 

These doctors of divinity were greatly 
cheered by such evidences of an audience 
of the existence of which they had been in 
entire ignorance. The unknown quantity 
is no inconsiderable factor in a minister's 
audience, and he can generate a world of 
inspiration and of comfort for his despond- 
ing soul if he will but challenge it with 
its certain but unnamed listeners, whom 
his eye hath not seen. 

Besides these precious audiences which 
are not in evidence, but which are never- 
theless real and actual, there are the occa- 
sional audiences, which demand a passing 
word. 

The occasional audience is the minister's 
opportunity of sending his spirit, in an 
unusual manner, upon its usual quest. He 
still has his chance to preach, in making an 
after-dinner speech, delivering an oration, or 
expressing the public conscience on some 
common platform. Not infrequently, the 
passion of his spirit kindles other life, 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 99 

when his utterance is at a long remove 
from his pulpit. The faculty of spiritual 
adjustment to an unusual situation is the 
secret of many a minister's power over 
men. 

The Jesuits in North America, whose start- 
ling and brilliant spiritual accomplishments 
Parkman has chronicled in faultless diction, 
possessed in an unusual degree this adjust- 
ing faculty, and knew the value of the 
occasional. A paper of instructions prepared 
at Paris for their guidance among the Hu- 
rons, is replete with sagacious suggestion. 
"You should love the Indians like brothers, 
with whom you are to spend the rest of 
your life. Never make them wait for your 
embarking. Take a flint and steel to light 
their pipes and kindle their fire at night, 
for these little services win their hearts. 
Do not make yourself troublesome to a single 
Indian. Bear their faults in silence, and 
appear always cheerful. Be not ceremonious 
with the Indians; take at once what they 
offer you ; ceremony offends them. Be very 
careful when in the canoe that the brim of 
your hat does not annoy them. Perhaps it 
would be better to wear your nightcap. 

LtfC, 



100 REAL PREACHING 

There is no such thing as impropriety 
among Indians. Remember that it is Christ 
and His cross that yon are seeking ; and if 
you aim at anything else, you will get 
nothing but affliction for body and mind." 

This estimate of the occasional at its real 
value, this strenuous sacrificial effort to 
appropriate it, is well worthy the spiritual 
meditation of those of us who are holding 
up the banner of the cross on the territory 
where these missionaries raised it. 

Beecher, pleading the American cause 
before English audiences, tinctured, to say 
the least, with Confederate sympathies, is, 
though far from his pulpit, yet preaching 
mightily. Hugh Price Hughes, passionately 
demanding the abolition of unsanitary dwell- 
ings, though grieving exceedingly a dull 
saint who mourned that he lost so fair an 
opportunity to " preach the gospel," is yet 
a minister of Christ. Perhaps F. W. Rob- 
ertson is, of all preachers of our time, the 
man who esteemed the occasional audience. 
He was more than once challenged for his 
unclerical tendencies, but his constant reply 
was a new approach to the workingmen 
from their own side. Once a lady reminded 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 101 

him of his heresies, and of their present and 
future consequences. " I do n't care," was 
his calm reply. " Do you know, sir," said 
she, "what don't care came to?" "Yes, 
madam," was the grave reply, " He was cru- 
cified on Calvary." Still he went on speak- 
ing for, planning with, the workingmen, de- 
fending their rights, boldly challenging their 
false positions, putting his rich spirit at 
their service, and dying in their love. 

A young minister may well learn by heart 
the closing words of his biography : " There 
were united around his tomb, by a com- 
mon sorrow and common love, Jews, Uni- 
tarians, Roman Catholics, Quakers, and 
Churchmen ; the workingmen, the tradesmen, 
and the rank and wealth of Brighton ; for 
once all classes and ail sects merged their 
differences in one deep feeling. They have 
raised above him a simple and massive mon- 
ument. On two of its sides there are bronze 
medallions, — one given hy his congregation, 
the other by the workingmen of Brighton. 
They record in touching words the gratitude 
of thousands. The thoughtful affection of 
the workingmen has entrusted to a commit- 
tee of four the task of keeping, even in win- 



102 REAL PREACHING 

ter, flowers blooming on his grave. They 
speak to many who make their pilgrimage to 
the spot, of the fair immortality which is 
given to the faithful soldier of Jesus Christ." 

The demands of public address are mightily 
increasing. The minister is wanted upon 
social, literary, patriotic occasions, to voice 
the sentiment or the duty of the hour. 
He may not with propriety make in every 
address a specific plea for immediate repent- 
ance. It is not proper on every occasion to 
conduct a revival service. But he can make 
his spirit disclose his heart without in the 
least violating the proprieties of the occasion. 
You have no business in, and no time for, 
any gathering in which your real spirit 
must wear a mask, but you can speak with 
other tongues as the spirit gives you utter- 
ance. 

The Algonquin convert gave the Jesuit 
Joques the suggestive advice, "Say nothing 
about the faith at first, for there is nothing 
so repulsive in the beginning as our doctrine, 
which seems to destroy everything that men 
hold dear; and, as your long cassock 
preaches as well as your lips, you had bet- 
ter put on a short coat." He did ; but he 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 103 

was preaching all the time. The value of 
an occasional audience is the opportunity it 
furnishes of expressing your spirit, not in a 
"long cassock," but in "a short coat." 

But let us now turn from the precious 
audience, unseen, and the occasional audi- 
ence, to the usual audience, the congrega- 
tion, the flock. 

Phillips Brooks makes the keen remark, 
"There is something remarkable in the way 
in which a minister talks about c my con- 
gregation.' They evidently come to seem to 
him different from the rest of human kind. 
There is the rest of our race, in Europe, 
Asia, Africa, and America, and the islands 
of the sea, and then there is c my congre- 
gation ! ' " 

" My -congregation ! " How smoothly and 
with what complacent satisfaction the words 
roll from the new-fledged minister's grateful 
lips ! His parish he verily believes to be a 
quarter section of Paradise; his people, of 
the essential spirit of the angels about the 
great white throne. When the disillusion 
comes, and the parish unmasks, what he 
thought was to be Paradise turns out to be 
at least a suggestion of purgatory, and some 



104 REAL PREACHING 

of his angels are found to be under con- 
tract to the arch ftend himself! 

Paul Leicester Ford wrote some years ago a 
book entitled " The True George Washing- 
ton." The idealized, fictitious, impossible 
Washington had so possessed the public 
mind that it was necessary in order to save 
this great character from passing into legend 
that his actual life should be recalled. The 
ideal sometimes paints and powders the real 
till it is unrecognizable, and when the paint 
is gone and the powder can no longer cover 
the deception, there is a shock which is 
indeed terrible. 

Many a minister has parted the cable of 
his hope and trust, when by the swinging 
tides of actual experience his boat has 
shifted position and given him a vision of 
the principalities and powers and spiritual 
wickedness in high places, ensconced in that 
parish, which to his imagination was a sam- 
ple of the new Jerusalem. 

Your congregation, then, understand it at 
the outset, is composed of men of like 
passions as your own. They are real flesh 
and blood ; they can bite and snarl, as 
well as bless and sympathize ; they are 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 105 

capable of meanest tricks, as of most gen- 
erous consideration; they can be bigoted 
as well as broad ; they can surprise you by 
their lack of, as by their loyalty to, Chris- 
tian principle. It is yours to expect reve- 
lations ; you will surely have them. It is 
yours to cling in any event to your faith. 

" Trust God. See all, nor be afraid." 

Iii your congregation will be found the 
sin-smitten soul. Even " the devil goes to 
church." Daniel Defoe sung, — 

" Wherever God erects a house of prayer 
The devil always builds a chapel there, 
And 't will be found upon examination 
The latter has the largest congregation." 

That is a specimen of the miserable dual- 
ism which has always tricked men's thoughts. 
The devil's chapel, so far as he has any, 
is the church; and when he " worships," 
he takes his seat in the house of God. 
When the devil quits going to church, the 
millennium will have dawned, and with the 
dawning the minister's distinctive occupa- 
tion will have vanished. It is your busi- 
ness to flash the resplendent light of your 



106 REAL PREACHING 

faith into the revolting darkness of his folly; 
to pierce with the gleaming spear of your 
holy aspiration the pale form of his grovel- 
ing spirit. His presence is your opportunity. 
Whether he sits fashionably attired in empty 
pride and lordly selfishness in the body pew, 
or, clad in the tawdry garments of Pharisaic 
self-righteousness, officiates as deacon and 
sits on the side aisle; whether he comes 
driving with loose rein the mettlesome pas- 
sions of youth, or curbing with restraining 
calculation the shriveling generosities and the 
small exactions of on-creeping age ; whether 
subtly or openly he reveals himself, he has 
a right in your church, and to a taste of 
the living water you freely furnish. 

There is a disposition to restrict the privi- 
leges of God's house to a certain class of 
the iniquitous and to deny those privileges 
to a certain other class. As an example 
of denial, take the liquor seller. A tem- 
perance sentiment with more strength than 
spirituality would hound him out of God's 
house and warn a young minister against 
any contact with so open a violator of 
God's law. Some ministers, if they see such 
a man in the congregation, immediately 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 107 

begin a fusilade of personal pyrotechnics, 
which light his path from the church, to 
be sure, but do not illumine his sin, or in 
any way reveal to him its awful character 
in God's sight. Now, any minister is a 
coward who waters his truth because some- 
body in the congregation cannot bear it full 
strength. Some sermons are like the stock 
of the Nicaragua Canal, of which it has 
been said that if the water could be ex- 
tracted from it there would be enough to 
float the navies of the world. Now while 
truth is to be bravely and completely spoken, 
at the same time there is a proportion of 
truth, a discretion of truth, a stating of 
truth, as well as a broadside of truth. I wish 
every liquor dealer went to church twice on 
Sunday. I detest, loathe, and abhor his 
business, but the only chance of winning him 
from it is to get him beneath the power of 
the truth, of which you and I are supposed 
to be flaming exponents. Christ came to 
call sinners to repentance. When the sinner 
comes to your church, remember that you 
are Christ's representative, and when you are 
tempted vigorously to use the flail, remember 
that your Master, always brave and unflinch- 



108 REAL PREACHING 

ing, could yet by the spirit that was in him 
hold his influence, even while dining with 
publicans and sinners. 

The leaders of our u best society" go to 
church. They sit in the broad aisle. They 
sometimes greatly desire to regulate, if not 
to control, the utterances of the preacher. 
Too often, by their long pocketbooks, they 
have made themselves apparently indis- 
pensable to the financial prosperity of the 
church, and a weak spirit of sycophancy, 
on the part of the church renders to these 
Caesars the things that are God's. The 
minister is expected to observe the pro- 
prieties, as do their other dependents, or he 
may expect their small revenge of a thrust 
at his living by giving up their pew. 

If their son is a prodigal, the minister 
must carefully avoid reference to fast young 
men. If their real estate is leased for un- 
righteous purposes, a sermon upon land- 
lords is distinctly out of order. If their 
income is not altogether clean and whole- 
some, it will be well for the preacher to 
"guard his utterances" concerning false bal- 
ances and kindred themes. 

Mr. and Mrs. Bulson, whom Dr. Parker 



THE BEAL AUDIENCE 109 

found in "Might Have Been," whose in- 
come was large, piety small, and spirit 
exacting ; whose pew was No. 13 ; who 
urged the minister to preach practical and 
pointed sermons, assuring him of their loyal 
support, have sailed to America, and are 
found in every congregation, — that is, until 
the minister preaches the sermon, and then 
cometh the end. It came with the 
English parson. He cleared his conscience 
by preaching the sermon, and " before the 
following Sunday pew No. 13 was cleared 
of cushions and hassocks." 

Young Timothy is greatly perplexed by 
Mr. and Mrs. Bulson of pew No. 13. To 
retain the courage of his convictions in 
their august presence ; to remember that 
he is not the minister of Mr. and Mrs. 
Bulson, but of Jesus Christ; to carry him- 
self in loyalty to his commission, and at 
the same time in generous sympathy with, 
and courteous independence of, his congre- 
gation ; to be great enough to fail appar- 
ently, while succeeding really, this is the 
emergency which sends a minister to his 
knees in importunate prayer that he may 
at once walk softly and have the stride 



110 REAL PREACHING 

of a Colossus; may be tactful, but abid- 
ingly true; always adorning, never adul- 
terating, his profession. Mr. and Mrs, 
Bui son, however, represent nobody but 
themselves. They are not in a position, 
with all their influence, to overthrow the 
genuine gospel. Remember that, and act 
accordingly. 

The inquirer goes to church. He comes 
from the sway of other influences from 
those to which you have been accustomed. 
He is wakened to earnest questioning by 
your words. He wants to be your audi- 
ence. He lays his misgivings, his doubts, 
before you. Let us suppose him very 
heretical doctrinally. Science has over- 
turned his faith. You shudder as he re- 
veals the long list of his disbeliefs. He is 
a great opportunity to you. If you meet 
him as a real man should, you may guide 
him safely through his Sahara. If you are 
unmanly, autocratic, small, you may spoil 
a rare spirit. The soul which is wide- 
awake enough to ask questions and to 
think for itself, and protestant enough to 
decline to take its great truths upon au- 
thority alone, is a soul on which no time 



THE BEAL AUDIENCE 111 

spent in suggestion or sympathy is wasted. 
Doubt need not be noxious. Some plants 
bloom only in the dark; but you will sit 
till the small hours to feast your eyes on 
the radiant beauty of the night-blooming 
cereus. 

"You say, but with no touch of scorn, 

Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes 
Are tender over drowning flies, 
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. 

"I know not: one indeed I knew 

In many a subtile question versed, 
Who touched a jarring lyre at first, 
But ever strove to make it true: 

"Perplexed in faith, but pure in deeds, 
At last he beat his music out. 
There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

"He fought his doubts and gathered strength, 
He would not make his judgment blind, 
He faced the spectres of the mind 
And laid them: thus he came at length 

"To find a stronger faith his own; 

And Power was with him in the night 
Which makes the darkness and the light, 
And dwells not in the light alone, 



112 REAL PREACHING 

"But in the darkness and the cloud, 
As over Sinai's peaks of old, 
While Israel made their gods of gold, 
Although the trumpet blew so loud." 

When a minister once confessed his doubts 
to Kingsley, the reply of that transparent 
spirit was this : "All I can say is, this 
may be the most fruitful and precious of 
your life experiences ! " That was no word 
of compliment. It was desperate appeal. 
It was a strong hand reached out to a 
soul in the swirling currents of melancholy 
despair. It saved that soul. 

God sometimes subtracts a man's pre- 
tended beliefs in order to restore real ones 
to him. Many a soul is sentenced to 
work out its own salvation. It does not 
believe ; it only believes that it believes ; 
and that that one belief may pass through 
its spirit and vitalize its real life, a benign 
Providence permits the cyclone of denial 
to cut its jagged trail through cherished 
formulas and boasted faiths. But after the 
whirlwind, the still, small voice! This was 
Robertson's experience, and the numbers are 
legion who have found the jewel of their 
faith in the debris of their beliefs. The 



THE BEAL AUDIENCE 113 

doubter who still hovers about the church 
and will open his perplexities to a minister's 
appreciative, sympathetic, but at the same 
time trenchant, treatment, is, indeed, a choice 
parishioner because of the opportunity he pre- 
sents. He is to be met not as an alien, a 
wanton, a heretic ; but as a lost child really 
seeking his Father. He is to be made to 
know that his Father is really seeking him. 
He will often be found to be the possessor 
of a true spiritual rushlight in the midst of 
his intellectual darkness, and will be an ex- 
ample in person of that paradox in poetry — 

" You ask for faith: I give you doubt 
To show that faith exists." 

The ivorshiper goes to church. The haughty 
Emperor of antiquity, whose conceit framed 
the presumptuous edict that every retainer 
should address his royal highness as "Your 
Eternity," was promulgating, after all, a uni- 
versal truth in the heart of a colossal error. 
He meant the appellation for his sovereignty, 
which was soon crushed to powder in the 
icy hand of that relentless and ever conquer- 
ing monarch — death. Had he meant it for 
his soul, even death would have kissed its 



114 REAL PREACHING 

scepter in submission. The title belongs to 
the emperor, to you, to every man — "Your 
Eternity." The grandest thing you know 
about yourself is this, that the red cor- 
puscles of your spiritual blood are quick 
with the life of the everlasting. 

"It must be so! Plato, thou reasonest well! — 

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond 
desire, 

This longing after immortality ? 

Or whence this secret dread, and inward hor- 
ror 

Of falling into naught ? Why shrinks the soul 

Back on herself and startles at destruction ? 

'Tis the divinity that stirs within us, 

'T is heaven itself that points out an hereafter 

And intimates eternity to man. 

Eternity ! Thou pleasing, dreadful thought ! " 

One of the thrilling chapters in ecclesi- 
astical literature is that in which Tertul- 
lian summons the soul into court, places it 
upon the witness stand, and cross-examines 
it concerning itself. "Take thy stand in 
the midst, O soul, and say whether thou 
art a divine and eternal substance, or the 
very opposite of divine, a mortal thing; 
whether thou art received from heaven or 



THE BEAL AUDIENCE 115 

sprung from earth. Stand forth, I say, and 
give thy witness." He summons not the 
prejudiced soul, "trained in libraries, fed 
in attic academies and porticoes," but the 
rude, unkempt, savage soul, and concludes : 
" These testimonies of the soul are as true 
as they are simple ; as simple as they are 
common ; as common as they are universal ; 
as universal as they are natural; as 
natural as they are divine." We have 
not outgrown Tertullian's plea ; still it is 
our joy to hold that 

in all ages 
Eyery human heart is human, 
That in even savage bosoms 
There are longings, yearnings, strivings, 
For the good they comprehend not, 
That the feeble hands and helpless, 
Groping blindly in the darkness, 
Touch God's right hand in that darkness 
And are lifted up and strengthened." 

This great truth of eternity is the meet- 
ing house of humanity. It is here alone 
that it has all things in common. Here 
the king lays aside his purple, and forgets 
his scepter. Here the peasant disregards his 



116 REAL PEE ACHING 

blue jeans, and is careless of his kit of 
tools. Here the king is no lord, the peas- 
ant no laborer; both are souls, heirs of 
immortality, kinsmen of God. 

You cannot repress an eternal instinct; 
it will find some way to express itself. 
The king and the peasant cannot stay at 
home, snug and quiet, in castle or cot- 
tage, alike walled about with the bulwarks 
of eternity. They are bound by the very 
necessities of their nature to go forth to 
seek, to find, to fellowship with the eter- 
nity with which they know themselves to 
be vitally and everlastingly related. This 
is why every man worships. Worship is 
the soul going out to acknowledge, address, 
and adore. It is the eternal in a soul 
voicing itself. 

The minister is charged with the con- 
duct of public worship. It is his mission 
not only to lead the services, but to pro- 
vide such helpful accessories that the soul 
may find itself in congenial environment 
and sympathetic atmosphere as it pays its 
vows in the presence of all the people. 

The church building is a not insignifi- 
cant factor in worship, and few more inter- 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 117 

esting or instructive chapters could be 
written upon this theme than that which 
should portray the reflection of the growth 
of the spirit of worship as seen in the 
development of church architecture. 

Our own denomination furnishes in this 
respect a conspicuous illustration. In our 
historic revolt from ritual and formalism, 
we abandoned the idea of beauty as a sac- 
rilege. The meeting-houses were built 
severely plain, not more from necessity than 
from principle. The principle was mixed 
with a strong flavor of prejudice, and our 
denominational task was to liberate the 
principle of purity in worship from the 
prejudice in which it had been incarcer- 
ated, and by our spirit of flexibility, adapt 
our provision for worship to current needs. 
It was thus that gradually the idea of 
appropriate church architecture changed from 
the severe to the symmetrical. To-day we 
build churches beautiful as art can suggest, 
costly as our ability will allow, and per- 
manent as the granite of the everlasting- 
hills can make them. Growth in our idea 
of worship has caused a return to the 
Gothic and Byzantine forms of architecture, 



118 REAL PREACHING 

from which in the interests of a pure 
worship we so strenuously revolted. The 
increasing attention given to church architec- 
ture, even with respect to our mission chap- 
els, is a most hopeful indication of our grow- 
ing sense of helpfulness in public worship. 

The order of service, too, is a worthy 
concern in public worship. When King 
James said to our fathers, " You must have 
a prayer-book and a ritual," those iron spirits 
replied in thunderous accents, " We won't," 
and, like many a hunted, hounded heretic 
since, went to the very opposite extreme 
and expressed their worship in coldest and 
most barren fashion, — no beautiful hymns, 
no inspiring orchestral strains, not even 
Bible reading in many churches. The ser- 
mon was the worship and the intellect out- 
raged the heart. From this there is to-day 
a decided and grateful return. Not that 
the sermon is being disparaged, for the 
demand for trenchant pulpit utterance was 
never more clamorous than to-day, nor the 
quality of sermons superior, but there is a 
gracious recognition of the need of an 
enriched public worship, which, according to 
its expression, is being satisfied. 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 119 

The Episcopal Church in America has 
been recruited largely from those who have 
felt the need of a helpful, worshipful ser- 
vice, and Congregationalism has been a rich 
contributor alike to her priesthood and to 
her laity. Now there is a distinct pur- 
pose among us to afford within our own 
communion the satisfaction of the needs of 
our membership. We recognize the Apos- 
tles' Creed as our own; the chants, too, 
are ours ; the prayers of the ancient saints 
are capable of expressing our spiritual aspi- 
rations, and upon appropriate occasion we do 
not hesitate to use them. The character- 
istic of our polity is adaptability, so that we 
can employ those forms, responses, creeds, 
and litanies which meet our need, with per- 
fect propriety and with perfect freedom. 

While no Congregational church would 
desire or permit the imposition of a ritual 
more than of a creed, still there is an 
increasing company of those who hope that 
in the not distant future an order of ser- 
vice may be suggested, possibly by the 
National Council, which will contribute to 
the spirit of orderliness among us, and be 
a model of suggestion for any who may 



120 REAL PREACHING 

be attempting to meet a growing sense of 
need in their own congregation. 

But whatever be the special order of ser- 
vice, its mission is ever the same — to assist 
the worshipful spirit. A performance of any 
sort, in the pulpit or choir gallery, is dis- 
tinctly alien to the spirit of worship. The 
service of song has been largely taken away 
from the people, and placed in the keeping 
of professional musicians. To recover the 
music to its rightful place in the service of 
public worship is an imperative necessity. 
On the one hand, the taste of the people 
needs elevation, for while we are rich in 
aspiring hymns and inspiring tunes, a lamen- 
table preference for unworthy music is pain- 
fully evident. On the other hand, the choir 
must regard the religious rather than the 
financial or artistic ministries of sacred song. 
Of course the best music is greatly to be 
desired, but there is a choice of the best, 
just as "there's odds even in deacons," 
and the quartettes are few who do not 
need Paul Dunbar's prayer, and fewer still 
who could not benefit by his " extry trainin'." 

" An' I hope you'll tell the singers 
'At I bear them no ill will. 



THE BEAL AUDIENCE 121 

'At they all may git to glory 

Is my wish and my desire. 

But they'll need some extry trainin' 

Tore they join the heavenly choir." 

It requires long and persistent effort, 
generous tact, and a fine determination to 
rescue a congregation from the quartette 
and choir master, but when once it has 
been accomplished the liberty in which the 
sons of God praise him in his sanctuary 
reveals itself as indeed glorious freedom 
when compared with the servitude of sister 
congregations to professional musicians. 

The Scripture lessons and responsive read- 
ings are not the least important of the ser- 
vices of public worship. It is not their 
mission " to fill up the program," or " to 
occupy the time." They are acts of wor- 
ship, and as such demand care in selection 
and dignity in utterance. Many a minister 
defeats his influence by the shiftless, me- 
chanical, and slovenly manner in which he 
reads from the book of God. 

Concerning public prayer, no words can 
too strongly portray its importance, or its 
privilege. To pass the needs, the desires, 
the hopes, the gratitude of a congregation 



122 REAL PREACHING 

through your own spirit, and give these 
sincere and appropriate utterance, in adora- 
tion, thanksgiving, and supplication, is a 
minister's most precious prerogative. The 
best preparation for it is the quiet hour of 
personal communion, in which the minister's 
own soul is kindled and his own heart 
melted. True prayer is never formal. You 
cannot pray to order. It is spirit meeting 
with spirit, soul fellowshiping with soul, 
life communing with life. Hence simplicity 
and fervency are two characteristics of pub- 
lic prayer. A young minister must guard 
against the temptation to deliver a discourse 
to God, a sort of a second Sabbath sermon. 
Be simple, natural, sincere, and permit your 
heart to have its way, and your public 
prayers will indeed be expressive of your 
people's souls and will bestow upon the 
congregation the blessing of your God. 

In concluding these addresses, young gen- 
tlemen, suffer the word of exhortation: — 

Be real men ! Preach real sermons ! Dis- 
cover real audiences ! Do not be " dapper 
young lady preachers ! " You have the 
most glorious of all earthly callings, if you 
live it gloriously. It will satisfy you in 



THE REAL AUDIENCE 123 

proportion as you sacrifice for it. Hard, 
splendidly hard, it is, also noble, magnifi- 
cently noble. Adorn it with the wealth 
of your enthusiasm and of your fidelity, 
and its very difficulties will be revealed to 
you as its resplendent treasures. 

It was a preacher, tried, tempted, sus- 
tained, who wrote what ought to be called 
The Minister's Hymn. 

" Oh, it is hard to work for God, 
To rise and take His part 
Upon the battle-field of earth 
And not sometimes lose heart ! 

(t Workman of God ! Oh, lose not heart, 
But learn what God is like, 
And in the darkest battle-field 
Thou shalt know where to strike. 

" Thrice blest is he to whom is given 
The instinct that can tell 
That God is on the field 
When He is most invisible. 

" Then learn to scorn the praise of men 
And learn to lose with God, 
For Jesus won the world through shame 
And beckons thee His road." 



